Sinfest

w.i.p.
Being a webcomic that updated almost daily for 16 years, Sinfest has a significant amount of archived strips (over about 5500 strips), making thus a efficient research on them a very difficult task. Therefore, helpful assistence on finding relevant images examples and information about the comic is welcomed.

About

Sinfest is a daily webcomic created by Tatsuya Ishida on January 17th, 2000, dealing with "contemporary issues and religion." Originally a satirical comic strip that used black humor and political incorrectness to parody popular culture, it grew famous due to the emergence in late 2011 of radical feminist elements, such as the Sisterhood or the Patriarchy, whose presence changed the strip's scope to social justice ethics.

History

Prior to the online launch of the strip, Ishida published a primitive form of Sinfest on UCLA's newspaper Daily Bruin since October 16th, 1991, while he attended the university; according to him, the strip was cruder, than the . The strip was posted online in a traditional monochromatic coloring, until a breakup with the webcomic portal Keenspot on July 9, 2006 led to the redesign of the site and the introduction of colorful sunday strips. A second redesign was lauched in June 1st, 2014.
The story of Sinfest started with few characters, mainly in two categories: regular humans, and Christian figures, including God and the Devil. Many new characters appeared as the story progressed. Moreover, in addition to the classic comic strips, Ishida included calligraphy works, as well as full-page comics on Sundays since June 16th, 2006.

Content Controversies

Over the course of 24 years of posting daily content on his website, Ishida has introduced in his story's lore many new characters, most of them serving as political and social allegories. Due to the often radical nature of his positions, and the fact that the number of people likely to be offended by one or several of them dramatically increased as he moved to a far-left, then to a far-right rhetoric (timeline resumed below), the popularity of his webcomics has dramatically fallen in recent years. Even his original fanbase in the dedicated subreddit, r/sinfest, has turned into a source of criticism and mockery against Ishida. Moreover, on December 2022, his Patreon account got terminated, certainly due to a breach of terms and conditions by his content.

The Sisterhood / Radical Feminism Rethoric

The Sisterhood is a group of young militant third-wave feminists that first appeared in February 7th, 2007; they reappeared in October 3rd, 2011, with their social justice ideals and definitive form defined, and a much more important presence in the story. It coincided with a much more radical approach to feminism, with a complete rejection of pornography and misandrist undertones.

Transphobic Rhetoric

Although the first mention of transgenderism in Sinfest goes back to November 3rd, 2011, and shows a neutral opinion on the subject, this topic only became prominent years later, starting on April 28th, 2019. From then, Ishida's feminist rhetoric switched to trans-exclusionary radical feminism, grounded in the belief that trans people and allies are modern gender-conformists and that transwomen are men trying to parasite the feminist movement, with the pharmacology and pornography lobbies as their backbone.

Anti-SJW And Alt-right Rhetoric

Along with the TERF content, Ishida introduced wokeness as an antagonistic force, controled by the Devil. Later, following the January 6th Capitol Insurretion, he shifted from treating both MAGA activists and leftist activists as a part of the problem, to fully supporting the MAGA side. [WIP], he introduced alt-right talking points and imagery into his story. In practice, this caused the apparition in the webcomic of memes typically associated with 4chan, such as Pepe the Frog, the NPC Wojak, Pedobear and GigaChad, as well as anti-vaccination stances and the shift from his previous anti-imperialist USA-critical rhethoric to a pro-Trump, anti-Biden rhetoric dwelving on conspirationism.

Antisemitic Rhetoric

Following the start of the 2023 Israel vs. Hamas conflict, Ishida took a stance with the Palestinian side and regularly criticized Israel's side, since October 15th. While it started with denounciations of Israel's war crimes and of the double standards of the mainstream media on this topic, it eventually devolved into antisemitic conspirationism, as he embraced the theory of a Jewish cabal controling the world, even associating it to unrelated topics (like transgenderism and immigration).
Along the way, starting in May 26th, 2024, he started including nazi imagery and rhetorics in his comics. Since August 4th, he even dwelved into Himmler-inspired Nordic white supremacism, something that was forshadowed by the introduction of Vikings in the story in April 19th.

Search Interest

External References