SYNCANDI is a sci-fi multimedia web/digital comic. Subtitled “real love in a synthetic world,” it portrays a moment of existence for Sync, an augmented human who has, over time, become 90% synthetic and Ikkyu the synthetic human healer Sync has kidnapped in order to extend her own life.

Sync takes Ikkyu into an “abandoned experimental zone”, Genies Res, to await her death as freely as she can manage. They are, of course being hunted by the corporate overlords. Ikkyu meets a shaman who may be the key to healing Sync.

The art is better than average, but not great. I’d call it a talented amateur level. Characters sit upon the backgrounds, rather than within them. The story synopsis having been established on the website, is then sort of ignored for what is supposed to be a romantic interlude between these two synthetic humans…without any effort made at building the relationship.

Let me overthink this for a moment. Ikkyu is a healer. It stands to reason that she’s naturally empathetic. It’s well known that patients develop profound emotional attachment with the medical professionals who treat them. It would, therefore, seem like a little effort needs to be made for this “relationship” to not seem kind of..icky? But Sync is supposed to be the tough, but fragile, non-verbal type, ala Xena, while Ikkyu is clearly meant to be the obvious femme to Sync’s butch. With their relationship established when we reach Genies Res right at the beginning of the comic, there’s nothing to tell us how they got to this place where they are both okay sleeping with each other. In a print comic I might allow this. There’s no excuse for not taking some time to walk us up to this point in a digital offering. 2 pages, and we’d be in sympatico. 4 pages and we’d feel the characters at a much deeper level than we do.

The story is told through digital comics and multimedia. And it has some interesting features. The website includes a story trailer and a music video which, if watched alone is a mere curiosity, but watching it after issue 4 of the comic, where I left off, could very well be the next “issue” itself. The site also contains a blog which contains Ikkyu’s Journal, which gives readers insight to the story from another perspective.

The story has updates monthly.

Highly influenced by cyberpunk and Japanese culture, the story itself is available in English- and Japanese-language versions

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Character – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 6

Overall – 7

Syncandi is a decent enough idea and with a few small refinements in future issues, could become compelling. All it needs is a little depth and a little polish.

Thanks to Roberto of STUDIO SYNCANDI for the review copy!