Tofauti Sawa (Sawhilii for "Sama Difference" ) is a webcomic by The Cynical Hound. It follows a spotted hyena named Sahara, who is seeking revenge on a lion for murdering her daughter and clan. During her quest to seek vengeance, she ends up losing the remainder of her family along the way, in part due to her own actions.
As she follows the lion pride responsible for her daughter's death, she runs into a series of unexpected events. She struggles to maintain her focus on her quest for vengeance, and ends up finding help in some of hte most unexpected places.
The comic can be read of Deviantart, Webtoons, and Comic Fury.
Warning, unmarked spoilers.
Tofauti Sawa contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Downplayed but Sahara is this to Thabo, her son. She favors her daughter more, can be overly stern and uncaring of his feelings, even telling him at one point she doesn't care about his opinion and telling him to quit cry after his father is killed by the rival matriarch's clan, although she follows that up by insisting he probably made it out (which sadly he did not ) and says she will alert Thabo when he gets arrives back. That being said, she is protective of him and does show him some affection. This attitude is actually true of real-life hyena mothers, who overtly prefer their daguher to males, as hyenas are typically a matriarchal society.
- Anti-Hero: Sahara could be this or even an *Anti-Villain depending how you look at her. She wants to kill the cubs of the lion who murdered her daughter, but never quite succeeds. Though she plot some nasty things during the comic, she never gets a chance to act on them. That and the affection she is revealed to have for her family is what stops her from falling into proper villain territory; she slowly betters herself to be closer to this.
- Anti-Villain: Downplayed. The "villain" part is debatable, as the morality of a realistic animal living on the savannah is muddy. Sahara wants to kill the cubs of hte lion who killed her daughter in the beginning, Tou, but only as revenge. In fact, its a plot point she is having a very hard time actually staying focused on this quest, instead getting caught up in various distractions along the way, often from the different animals she meets. A few times she tries to oust a hyena matriarch from different clans she ran into, only to be thwarted each time. The first time she is ousted by a very large hyena matriarch, the second time she seems to be plotting to, she ends up simply talking to said matriarch instead and even gets some words of comfort for her. Sahara seems to simply ditch her more unscrupulous ideas rather quickly. Even her *Abusive Parent tendencies towards Thabo are downplayed as she still cares about and protects him from Jackals trying to eat him; plus this is actually just how most hyena mothers treat their male children in real life. It could just be a matter of following instinct.
- Suprisingly Realistic Outcome: Thabo, being a cub, still has to nurse from his mother, Sahara. What makes it this tropes is the fact that most works focusing on animals that involve cubs, such as Lion King, actually tend to gloss over this fact and portray cubs as eating meat exclusively, even though it takes many months for them to be weaned.
