Contemplating Reiko

A one-panel webcomic created by Vincent Grisanti. Reiko Mouryou is a typical 6-year-old girl. Except she's a demon. A very violent, darkly sarcastic little demon girl. She lives with her three sisters: Shihoka, whose eyes are always hidden behind a pair of sunglasses; Shirabe, a serial dater (and date killer), and Shinobu, a tomboy ninja. Along with her pet crocodile, Lucy (short for Lucifer), and imposing Yakuza father, Mitsugu, they live a typical family life. By that I mean that people frequently meet a violent end.

Featured on Grisanti's Web site Tainted ink.com.

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This webcomic provides examples of:

• A Love to Dismember: Provides the page photo.
• Art Evolution: Reiko has evolved slightly since the comic began. Noticeably, her face became rounder, and she lost a pair of worn looking lines under her eyes.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Mitsugu
• Big Sister Instinct : When she see's Reiko getting repeatedly pelted by snowballs, Shinobu deals with it like you'd expect. As in, she stabs the girl throwing them through the back with her sword.
• Black Widow : Shirabe. Men who go on a date with her rarely survive the experience.
  • "The best way to a man's heart is through his stomach!" Literally.
• Blatant Lies: I didn't do it
• Blinding Bangs: Reiko has these, though they don't hide her eyes...they hide the budding pair of horns growing out of her forehead.
• Bling Bling Bang: As demonstrated here
• Continuity Nod: This panel, featuring Shinobu skateboarding in the house, is followed up by her punishment for it two strips later.
  • Remember Shinobu saying she wanted to wean her Guinea Pig off of vegetables, and onto human flesh? It worked.
• Deliberately Monochrome : The comic is done entirely in black and white, with red being the only color used. Certain strips have an option to view them in color, but the feature seems to have been dropped as of the sites update.
• Eats Babies: Pretty self explanatory.
• Eyes Always Shut: Reiko's mom Fumiko.
• Eye Scream: "Eyes on your own paper Petey"
• Four Is Death: A recurring motif in the series. There are four sisters, all four years apart, a blushing Reiko is seen offering four roses to The Grim Reaper, and so on.
• Friendly Sniper: Fumiko. A rather polite Yamato Nadeshiko, who can apparently shoot the wings off a butterfly from 1000 yards.
• Headless Horseman: Irving. Though he's too much of a Butt Monkey to be a threat.
• Hidden Eyes: Shihoka, whose eyes are concealed behind a pair of sunglasses.
• Horned Humanoid: All the Mouryou's have horns. Reiko's are hidden under her bangs.
• Infant Immortality : Averted. Hard
• Meaningful Name: Reiko is a common Japanese name, but the kanji of her name is spelled atypically, reading as "Ghost Child."
  • And her sisters all have names beginning with "shi" -- which is a homophone for "death."
• Missing Mom: The comic went on for five years without even a mention of Reiko's mom, her whereabouts, or even whether she was alive. She finally appeared in 2010. Her excuse for the long absence? A fishing trip. With a dead whale to prove it.
• Multiple Head Case: Zeni and Nadi Tweeling.
• Noodle People: Pretty much everyone in the Mouryou family aside from Mitsugu.
• Obliviously Evil: It's often hinted that the Mouryou family isn't so much intentionally malevolent as they just consider random murder, mutilation, and torture a completely normal and reasonable way to deal with others. It's not completely consistent on this matter, though.
• Odd Name Out: Reiko is the only one of the Mouryou siblings, whose name doesn't begin with Shi-
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Every member of the Mouryou family, except for Shirabe and Mitsugu.
• Pointy Ears: All the Mouryou's.
• Police Are Useless: No smoking
• Precocious Crush: Reiko appears to have one...on The Grim Reaper of all people.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Reiko and Mitsugu.
• Sadist Comic
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch : "Don't fuck with my sister bitch"
  • See the above "Big Sister Instinct"
• Too Dumb to Live: A large majority of Reiko's classmates.
  • For two examples, they talk about how awesome and adorable Reiko's boa constrictor is after it's eaten them alive, and eagerly pay to get their picture taken with a "Santa" who's very obviously a vicious child-eating ogre of Japanese mythology, and actually has the lower body of a half-eaten child still dangling out of his mouth.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Par for the course, actually. At least, for demons.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: Demonstrated here, by Shinobu.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Fumiko is the demon world version: a doting mother and Housewife whose hobbies include flower arranging, caligraphy, tea ceremony, katana wielding, drinking booze, and bounty hunting.
• Youkai: Uncle Kenzo is an oni.
• Yubitsume: Mitsugu appears to have undergone this. It's hinted elsewhere that it's just his wife's response to touching her cooking before it's ready to serve, though.