In Our Shadow

VibeCheckAug 18, 2026

I always love me a story where the humans are gone and the animals have evolved and dominated the world. The worldbuilding is detailed and interesting, the mechs look awesome—especially in combat, and the art is really good. Unfortunately, there is one major problem that really brings In Our Shadow down for me: the script. It’s way too bloated. One look at a random page and you’ll see what I mean. The textboxes are more than plentiful and are all really bunched up together. Add in the fact that the webcomic is almost 600 pages long and the readthrough quickly becomes an endurance test. A lot of it is either needless fluff, or the author trying to add as many explanations as possible to ensure there are no plot holes. There’s surely a better way to go about it than having that much yapping. I would’ve dropped it way earlier had the main antagonist Emperor Schorl not been interesting. Even he too wasn’t spared from the yap-olympics, his personality really stands out and everything surrounding him is pretty interesting. Surprisingly, reading through the entirety of it was worth it, because the sequel is surprisingly an improvement. Sure, some pages do have a bloated script, but that issue isn’t nearly as prevalent as it was in the previous series. There are also many more memorable characters in this one. Not nearly as much as Schorl, but they are certainly more interesting than the last main cast. It has all that mech action I loved and the drama is more potent considering the new gaslighting main villain.