WebComic It's... weird
Raine Dog is about a dog who can talk... and is kept as a pet... and... she kisses a boy and is neutered.
Whenever I read this thing, it feels like I'm dreaming. Many of my dreams are full of lovecraftian creatures, indescribable concepts and events, and I always feel a bit phased out when I wake up from one of those. And they all make more sense than this comic: it is quite likely the most outright bizarre thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Nothing in it makes even the slightest bit of sense.
It's not bad, per se, but it's not good either. It's just... it's an Eldritch Abomination of web comics. No words to describe it, for good or bad, so utterly alien that it cannot be comprehended by human mind. Its premise, its events and plotlines, aren't just bad writing, not just mere Ass Pulls: with those, unlike with what's going on here, at least I would have some idea of why it went that way. Trying to make any sense of them, the characters, the world itself, is literally making my head ache.
I have no idea what is moving inside the mind of its creator. Maybe he's really Nyarlathotep in disguise. That would make more sense than Raine Dog.
WebComic An ambitious, failed experiment
Raine Dog is a slow-paced, melodramatic webcomic that I can't like for the life of me.
The comic explores the true horror of a Garfield- or Scooby Doo-style world where sentient Talking Animals are kept as pets. I respect that. Some marvellous stories have been made by taking well-established tropes, inducing reality and toasting marshmallows above the burning ruins. The titular Raine's idyllic puppyhood is established well enough. The comic slowly reveals logical but unpleasant features of the setting, trying to get its audience on Raine's side and used to thinking of her as a person who happens to be a dog: the fate of Raine's idol, Laika; her boy owner finding it strange that he sees her as someone; Raine being kept in the yard in a storm; the great tragedy that kids are not supposed to sex up the family pet.
Crash and burn.
Yes, yes, it was just a kiss slathered with enough innuendo to fog up windowpanes. This is my experience I'm relating, and I recoiled. In fact, I only now realize that her subsequent tragedies (scavenging from garbage cans, being hunted by animal control) were presented as depravities. I had shrugged them off as perfectly ordinary: after all, she'd been thoroughly established as a dog. Things could always improve later, but given that I was completely unphased by the recent revelation that Meat Is Murder, it's hard to imagine that the comic could get me to go along with it again.
Interspaced with the tragic are scenes of present-day Raine, a self-confident, emancipated canine who has yet to do much except sermonize. Given how her views line up with her author's, I get the impression that we're receiving Important Messages about Oppressed Minorites through the plight of enslaved cartoon animals whose closest real-world equivalent isn't even in the real world but in the remake of The Planet of the Apes.
The differences between wronged!Raine and free!Raine show that Raine Dog will eventually pick up. She'll get a character arc and rock the status quo. Still, waiting for it would take years due to the comic's unpredictable and glacial update schedule, so I think we can make a judgement on what we've seen so far: A pity party where The Woobie isn't very good at her role.