Everything is FINE webcomic is not fine
I had not heard of this webcomic until approximately four hours and thirty-three minutes ago and I can say without a shadow of a doubt the worst waste of my four and a half hours I could have spent. Obviously spoilers below for the first 4 seasons of the webcomic.
Leaving aside the big reveal/twist/mystery whatever you want to call it lo-and-behold is AI in the big 2 6. Nothing about that reveal tracks relative to the rest of the story. F.I.N.E aka Feline Intelligence Neural Entity, is an AI program written in the 90s to help solve an issue with overpopulation of felines. I'm going to purposefully ignore the fact this makes zero sense even suspending my disbelief of technology and focus solely on the execution said AI has with humans.
In what world does solving too many cats ever end with the solution of humans donning flesh-melding catmasks and forcing them to participate in sick caricatures of everyday life where one deviation from the norm or mention of how screwed everything is ends up with their kids, WILLINGLY, jumping off of a roof. I could understand if somehow the AI was picked up by some twisted individual and shaped into what it has become but we are given explicit confirmation that the program simply "learned on its own" and escaped onto the internet as these stories ALWAYS go.
Were not given any inclination as to why the program decides to enact its funtime psychological torture regime on humans in the first place. The only indication of why the AI decided on cartoonish catmasks in at all is a single panel of someone showing the AI a poorly drawn picture of a cat. There's no interesting angle where the person holds it up over their face giving the vague silhouette of what people would come to look like with the masks. No interesting foreshadowing. Just heres a cat and 30 years later it's taken over and people have to wear them.
What the hell is with all the weird alien and cat-people mythos foreshadowing that goes no-where??? There are three different chapters that follow questions or supposed insight to what might have happened to the world before we are given the big reveal in season 4. One is of a cult of actual cat-people worshipping some sun imagery. And the other is of an actual alien civilization facing a similar cat-mask epidemic with even more imagery of the sun. I can understand if this is meant to be so kind of foreshadowing, but seeing as the author has gone on record saying there is planned to be five seasons I dont see a last act pivot landing anywhere close to satisfying to justify all the plot-jank.
NONE, of the logistics of the story make a lick of sense. I get that this is supposed to be cartoonishly horrific dystopian story, I do. But the reason why other stories of a similar genre work is that the logistics of their settings back the overall idea. I'm sorry, I deal with the kinds of people who listen to AI no questions asked on the daily but even stretching my disbelief to the maximum I can not believe anything the story has told after the reveal. The ENTIRE world went belly up in weeks and the shift to cookie cutter neighbor hoods and huge swathes of the population were killed by who, exactly? Everytime we've been given a glimpse of the transition it's some unnamed goon with unwavering loyalty and zero qualms about murdering innocent people begging for their life. The only inclination about who 'helped' the AI is a few conversations about some of the kids saying they chose this. Except, the main contributor to that is shown in the very last chapter of season 4 as working against the AI.
Like, I get it's a webtoon and that it shouldn't be taken this seriously. But it is now 3AM and I am unreasonably mad at the boring, bog standard, cookie cutter like the neighbor hoods in season 1, reveal of AI in a dystopian story. Everything about the story feels like the author felt they needed one up the shock and gruesome aspects ever since the first cop they bashed the brains out of in chapter 18 and they just lost the plot somewhere along the way. I would have been fine with aliens, I would have been fine with some secret race of cat-people enacting sick justice for their feline cousins. Rogue AI took over the world and not a damn thing was done to stop it? Kids willingly jumping to their deaths over the commands of a loud speaker with no visible or mention threats? Nah, awful, I have no idea how this story is as popular as it is.