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Reviewed by Dan Polley Kiyo Takamine has a problem — he just doesn’t feel challenged in his scholastic works. That’s when a little kid, Zatch Bell, drops into his room after being carried through the air on the talons of a bird in Makoto Raiku’s “Zatch Bell!” Zatch makes quite an entrance in front of Kiyo, who soon learns that Zatch is a present from his dad to help Kiyo improve his life. But Zatch doesn’t make a great first impression on Kiyo, blowing him across his bedroom with a bolt of lightning sent out of his mouth. Zatch came equipped with a red book of strange markings in a language even Kiyo’s dad, an archaeology professor, couldn’t understand. Kiyo, urged on by his mother, adopts a big brother role for Zatch while Zatch tries to help Kiyo out at school, by composing plans to help him make friends. Zatch’s first plan works, although in a roundabout way, and Kiyo and Suzy Mizuno soon develop a relationship. But the more Zatch instigates Kiyo into acting impulsively, the more trouble the duo find themselves in. And Kiyo just doesn’t understand who — or what — Zatch is. And that’s not good news when a fine-dressed man with a boy who looks strikingly similar to Zatch appears with a blue book. Zatch is playful, energetic and strangely assertive, and as such, he acts quite well as the polar opposite of Kiyo, whose inward, unsympathetic personality is rough and abrasive, both for his peers and the readers. But Zatch manages to change that quite well. This action-packed first volume does well in setting the mystery and unraveling enough pieces by the end to keep the reader hooked. And the characters unleashed in the pages within bounce off the page with as much energy as the lightning bolt shot out of Zatch’s mouth. Raiku alternates his art by scattering in a few pages of painted out pages, which also gives the volume a bit of a darker feel at points. And the sequence during which Zatch defends Kiyo’s character in front of Suzy is spine-chilling in its grandness. “Zatch Bell!” is an adventuresome mystery that slowly unwinds as the volume progresses. And Zatch and Kiyo, the stalwarts of the first volume, keep the plot afloat in their delightfully wonderful antics. Comment on this review of Zatch Bell v1 on the Manga Life Forums. |
29 December 2009
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