A webcomic by Jenny-Jinya which premiered in October 2019. Each comic follows the Grim Reaper, who talks with animals that have recently passed on. Each comic also has a lesson pertaining to Human-Animal relations.
It can be found on Webtoon here.
Loving Reaper provides examples of:
- Agonizing Stomach Wound: In "Mama Bear," a mother bear has a tap run straight into her gall bladder to extract her bile.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- The Reaper promises that everyone who dies is never forgotten on the other side.
- The turtle loses her eggs, but is reunited with her friends, who had also died.
- Break the Cutie: In the Dogfighting comic, the people abuse the pit bull puppy till it becomes hateful, angry, and aggressive.
- Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Perhaps unsurprisingly given their respective domains, Death and Life have this dynamic, with Death being kind but somewhat gloomy and Life being more peppy and... well, lively. Best seen when Death almost hits the Despair Event Horizon over the wildfires in Australia, before Life gives him a pep talk to help pull him out of it.
- Celestial Body: A subtle case: Life's hair looks a like starry night sky.
- Comfort the Dying: What Death tries to do to the dead souls.
- In "Good Boy," Death encounters a puppy tied to a post on a cold night. He offers his cloak to the pup, and even gives him five more minutes for his owners to come back. When the owners fail to show up, Death comforts the puppy by saying they'll never be cold or left behind again.
- In "Australia," Death reassures a dying young koala that their family will join them into the new realm.
- In "Greens," Death finds a domestic rabbit who's dying of exposure. The rabbit wishes that they could have seen the grass and flowers that they dreamed of before they died, and Death shows them the souls of the dead plants he's collected, saying that everything that dies becomes part of his realm.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Inverted. For a webcomic that is very tragic most of the times, the endings can sometimes be surprisingly heartwarming.
- The fox who's drowning in a pool ends up being saved by the teenage girl and Life.
- A dog, with a seemingly maimed face, is never adopted, and belittled by people who are looking in shelters for dogs. The woman working at the shelter starts getting desperate, and gives up. She ends up taking him home and adopting him.
- Dark Is Not Evil:
- The Reaper, as the title suggests, is a kind individual who always makes sure to comfort those who have died.
- The owls from "It Will Change" are among the few animals in the series to anticipate Death’s arrival. They’re still framed as sympathetic, just as all the other animals are.
- Death by Despair: The mother swan whose eggs were crushed by teenagers is so heartbroken that she dies and welcomes death without any hesitation. This is sadly Truth in Television; swans (especially Mute swans, the species of swan involved in the real story that inspired this particular part) are known to grieve for the loss of their mate or offspring, and will quite literally die because of it in some cases.
- Death of a Child: The children in question are baby animals, but this trope still applies.
- In "Good Boy", a human child does pass away in hospital of an unspecified illness Death sends the dog who passed away earlier in the strip to comfort the boy after his passing.
- In "Hear Me", a duck notices that one of her ducklings is missing, presumably unaware that it got run over by a car.
- The Orangutan baby from "In A Bit" dies of malnutrition, and tells her mother to not yell at the "evil bone man".
- In "It Will Change", an owl feeds her chicks mice, unaware that they have been poisoned with pesticide. When the reaper arrives, she asks him what happened.
- Devastating Remark: In one strip, when a boy calls his dog a "stupid dog", we see the dog looking shocked with the words echoing in his head.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: The Reaper is a kind being who does whatever he can to comfort the souls he must collect.
- Endangered Species: The Carolina parakeet, while wanting to see what its feathers used to look like, learns that its species used to be one, before it went completely extinct.
- Engineered Heroics: One comic focuses on a puppy who either drowned or died of hypothermia because two guys decided to throw him into a cold lake and to pretend to rescue him. They did this multiple times since they wanted a good shot of it for their Youtube channel. The comic ends with both of them being hailed as heroes by their comments section, with no one even knowing that not only is the "puppy rescue" video fake, but that they killed the puppy they "rescued". The comic is a clear stab at the 'Rescue Ring' of animal abuse channels that masquerade as being animal rescuers, when in reality the people behind them engineer the situations for nothing more than clout and money at the expense of the suffering of the animals they film.
- For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Death becomes tangible during Halloween, allowing him to interact with living humans as though he himself were a fellow human. He is otherwise only visible to animals.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Apparently this is Death's rationale for recruiting ghost dog and cat to be his assistants and bring him recently deceased souls in "On a Mission". He even outfits them with little black capes and scythes made out of duct tape.
- Friendly Rivalry: Life and Death are rivals because they're two opposite concepts, but they're also best friends. Death actually likes it when Life wins and Life knows her creations will be in good hands if she loses.
- Friend to All Living Things: The Reaper tries to help every animal adjust to dying. He also doesn't mind it when he is denied a soul (if anything, it makes him happy). His friend, Life, is very loving and nurturing of her creations.
- Ghostly Animals: Being a comic that raises awareness of animal abuse, frequently has ghostly animals, including a duck, a turtle, and a swan.
- Good Versus Good: Exaggerated. Every time a being is on the verge of dying, Death goes to it in order to bring it into his realm, while Life tries to save them, if the opportunity presents itself. However, they are dear friends of each other, and as much as Death loves losing to her and will do everything to take care of the souls, Life is never angry at him whenever one of her creations die and trusts him fully with them.
- Gory Discretion Shot: In Hear Me, one panel shows the duckling staring at the incoming car. The next panel is completely black, and the one after that shows its ghost next to a blood splatter.
- Green Aesop: Don't litter. It can kill wild animals.
- Grim Reaper: Death appears as the classical scythe-wielding skeleton-in-a-robe grim reaper.
- Heroic BSoD: In "Hope", Death has one of these in the aftermath of the 2020 Australian wildfires. Life comes to bring him out of this funk.
- Humans Are Flawed: For every human who wrongs an animal, and there are a lot of those, there is someone else who shows kindness to them.
- Jerkass: Many examples, since the series involves animal abuse. Special mention goes to those guys who stage the rescue of a drowning puppy to get clicks on Youtube, Kathy’s parents for abusing their dog Zeus and the teenagers who destroyed the eggs of a swan for no reason.
- Karma Houdini: The humans responsible for the animals' plight are never punished for their actions. However, since this universe definitively has an afterlife, they'll presumably be judged posthumously.
- Lost Pet Grievance: A few owners do miss their pets.
- In "Void Puppy," it's revealed that the owner of the dog from "Little Fish" has been given a new puppy to help cope with their loss. They at first resent the pup for not being the one they lost, even snapping at them for bringing them their previous dog's favorite toy. The owner, in the end, comes to terms with the fact that the puppy isn't the dog they lost, and they apologize to them, as well as promising to get the pup a new toy.
- In "Pumpkin Time," a cat owner laments the loss of their black cat, and carves a jack o' lantern in her honor.
- Mercy Kill: The owner of a dog suffering during his last days decides to put him down peacefully and painlessly. He breaks down in tears afterwards.
- Mood Whiplash: In "One Last Ride", the remoras jokey and humorous attitude comes to a screeching halt when they see that their shark friend got finned. They try to offer comfort by telling him one more joke, but he sadly dies before they can finish it.
- Mysterious Animal Senses: Unlike humans, living animals can see Death just fine any time of the year.
- Nice Guy: Both The Reaper and Life. He does what he can to comfort and help animals and does not enjoy claiming souls, while she is a cheery, motherly goddess who loves all her creations with her whole heart.
- Not So Above It All: Of a sort. Death is usually pretty grounded and reserved, and takes his duties very seriously. But when he and Life briefly exchanged roles, he was nothing short of ecstatic during that time and was eager to experiment with the creation of new life and stretch the limits of what he could accomplish, which, at the very least, ended up resulting in the creation of the platypus.
- Not So Stoic: Death, despite being pretty saddened by the deaths of the animals in the comics, is usually pretty subdued in his behavior. However, he emotes very strongly on two occasions:
- When a wild fox is saved from drowning by a girl and reanimated by Life, he breaks into laughter, very happy to have lost against Life.
- The wild fires in "Hope" have left him pretty shaken, and he bemoans the loss of life that occurred out loud, looking disheveled and defeated.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Death seems out of character is "Among Starry Skies", waxing philosophic about humans instead of comforting the reindeer. He does have to wait for the animal to die, but he's usually much kinder.
- Ominous Owl: Downplayed—the owls from “It Will Change” are among the few animals that anticipate the Reaper’s arrival and they speak to him like an old friend. Despite this, they are still portrayed as purely sympathetic, just as all the animals are.
- Outliving One's Offspring:
- The albatross from "Little Mo" tries to feed their chick, but all they can find to feed them is litter. The little chick ends up starving to death, but not before Death lets the two say goodbye.
- In "In A Bit," a mother orangutan runs away from Death while holding her baby, trying desperately to find a good home for the two of them in the remains of a deforested ruin. The baby orangutan ends up dying and being buried by the mother.
- Pet the Dog: After the lion bemoans how it never got a chance to be a king, the reaper allows him to rule over some cat souls.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Not a villain per se, but the Reaper is merely doing his job when he takes a soul. In fact, when Life manages to win a soul over him, he's overjoyed.
- Puzzling Platypus: Platypuses were created by Death during a time when he and Life briefly exchanged roles and he wanted to create something brand-new. Neither of them are quite sure what to make of the resulting creature, although Death seems to be proud of his work.Death: It's uh... (...) It hunts via electricity and it lays eggs, but still lactates... somehow... and it has venom too! With 80 different kinds of toxins to be exact!
Life: ...And what is it?
Death: Perfect. - Replacement Goldfish: The man in Void Puppy can barely stand to be around their new dog. But the little old lady in Black Cats responds to the death of her cat by going to the shelter and adopting a cat off of death row (the dead cat's mother, it turns out). Neither reaction is wrong, per se. Grief is different for everyone!
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Getting a pet does seem nice, but taking care of them is a lot of work and a lot of responsibility, and some people can't handle that. As such, the owners will start to see their pets as annoyances rather than friends, leading to abuse. As the author puts it, "if you decide to adopt a pet, do research and see if it's worth the work".
- If everything goes well, and both you and your pet go on to have many happy years together, eventually the unfortunate truth that humans will outlive (most of) their animal companions shall arrive. As traumatic an experience as having to have your companion put down is, your presence will calm your dear friend in their final moments, and in time, you will be able to thank yourself for being there to comfort them.
- Related, but we once see a pet owner who cannot stand to look at his new pup anymore because they were gifted to him as a Replacement Goldfish for their deceased dog. It takes him a while to come around to them and realize that this pup is their own dog, but even then, he is not won over yet.
- As seen in the rabbit comic, domesticated rabbits can't survive out in the wild because they can't adapt and will die.
- Children cannot be responsible for pets on their own. This plays out in both Say Hello, where the little boy neglects his pet hamster, and Shut Up, where the parakeet is abandoned by the child that picked it out. Most tragically, in Soon, Kathy wants to help Zeus, but her parents won't let him in from the cold, and the blanket she offers is ineffective. In the end, it's the parents who should be making sure that the pets in their household are well taken care of.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The whale in Henry seems to be unaware of the fact that he is the "Henry" in the poster. Subverted, as he reveals that he always knew that. Double subverted on Patreon where it is revealed that Henry was the former occupant of his tank, and his spirit was racing the whale, even though he couldn't see him.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: A literal example. A puppy is rescued from drowning in a lake, only for the people that rescued them to throw them back into the water because the video they filmed of the "rescue" didn't turn out right. The puppy actually drowns as a result.
- Your Costume Needs Work: In HAPPY HALLOWEEN - You Tried, a child dressing up as a silly-faced grim reaper notes that Death's grim reaper get up looks almost perfect. The child never realizes that they are addressing the real grim reaper even after Death drops a few hints.
