Robot x Laserbeam

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Robot x Laserbeam is like Kuroko no Basket sports-wise. Kuroko no Basket was basketball with superpowers, Robot x Laserbeam is golf with superpowers.

The reason I think Robot x Laserbeam is a bit better than Kuroko no Basket so far is because I enjoy Robo's character more than Kuroko's and Kagami's and in general, so far, it lacks the unnecessary and cringeworthy drama that Kuroko no Basket had.

I also like the fact that the mangaka chose golf because every hole is special in a golf course and many unexpected things can happen as part of the game, allowing the mangaka to write all sorts of ... craziness.

If you are looking for something sports based that is over the top (and not realistic by any means) and fun to read, here you are.

If you ever read or watched any Ganbatte type of anime or manga, this fills all the tropes while bringing only a bit new on the table. I usually like this kind of anime, despite every sports anime is most of the time told in the same way they always have unexpected turns or work in general. Main characters can lose a battle and its always exciting to know more about a different type of sport. Robot x Laserbeam had certainly some flaws but it had a good premise to offer.

It stats off that the main character Robato is basically an autist who is constantly ... in dialogue not understanding what other people mean. This isnt really bad , but it had some potential with character building. In the end robato certainly becomes a little more down to earth and seem more "normal" but there isnt much done with the aspect that he is completely different from everyone. Yeah his skills in golf reflect his personality, but the main character doesnt really have any friends, is good at school and so on. It doesnt really make sense that he doesnt get bullied by other people and end up getting respected trough his gold. Everyone ridicules him yes but not in a very mean way per se.

There are other characters, but most of them arent really worth mentioning. There is a recurring enemy that serves like a obstacle to overcome to get to his true rival, a golf pro player he met. But the enemy itself seem rather to be too strong since he is a direct rival of the golf pro player. There arent really many matches inbetween. In the end since the manga got just dropped, there isnt any endfight with the pro player and the story just ends.

To the story itself, the premise, really starts off well. In itself i wont spoil too much because the beginning is really worth reading. Its a real good way to set up a rival that is just way too strong for the main character. They play a match and in the end both of them are not satisfied. Robato wants to play again against him, but the pro player says he only wants to play again but only in a pro tournament . Robato then joins basically the golf club. He trains a lot but the whole training arc is completely skipped and suddenly the tournament arc starts. That really hit me off and almost made me drop it. But what kept me going was how exciting it was to read the matches. They were pretty fun and unexpected most of the time.

In the end i recommend Robot x Laserbeam only to sports anime fans who are interested in the golf setting. Sadly that the story doesnt end into anything but the premise, character building and the matches were just enjoyable to read.

[Minor Spoilers]

I honestly just picked this up since it got recommended to me on the Jump+ app and I was a fan of the original Kuroko manga to give it a shot. I had no expectations and I felt disappointed by the end of it.

Story and Art: Robot x Laserbeam has a pretty typical sports manga setup (protag is somehow really good at the sport but doesn't care much for it, meets a rival who ignites his passion for said sport). The setup really allowed for this series to continue for longer than the 62 chapters it got, but WSJ is a brutal periodical ... and I can see why it got axed rather quickly. The problem with the setup is that it doesn't really go anywhere afterwards. The protagonist and his rival now have a goal, but then the story just doesn't do anything with that. There's a timeskip that essentially cuts out a significant portion of time that could've been used to develop characters. I'm still sitting here wondering why Fujimaki did that for seemingly no reason so early on in the series (there's no way he knew he was getting cut from WSJ at this point of the story). The rest of the series just showcased one tournament arc and then like 1/3 of one before ending (my guess is after the first tournament arc, Fujimaki heard he was getting axed). It was just lacklustre all around because there were so many characters being introduced in the chapters leading up to the conclusion; none of which ever end up being used or developed past just a copy/paste Generation of Miracles-esque design. The art itself is fine, but just boring and repetitive.

Characters: This is where I had the biggest gripes with the series as a whole. Almost all of the characters are just carbon copies from Kuroko no Basket and it's pretty evident with their designs. Even their personalities were almost carbon copies and it just sucks. It's difficult to develop characters for a sports manga that isn't repetitive/the same as another character from another series, but I felt that the character designs/development in this manga specifically were lazy. The protagonist was basically Kuroko but not invisible and played golf really well and a lot of the other characters had a mashup of personality traits from the Generation of Miracles/Seirin. You can really see the influences from Kuroko in a majority of the designs, which can be a good thing, but I just found it was repetitive. It's also not Fujimaki's fault that he introduced all these powerful rival characters only to have the plug pulled from right underneath him, but I could immediately match each character's design with a specific sports manga rival personality or draw parallels from Kuroko.

Enjoyment: The manga was pretty standard for the first 8 chapters and I felt myself wanting to continue with the series. I kept going with it until the end because it was short, but it was just one disappointment after another. The story loses its charm once you start drawing parallels and seeing how repetitive it is. I love sports anime/manga and I know there's going to be a degree of repetition in the genre, but Robot x Laserbeam was just way too similar to Kuroko no Basket and I couldn't enjoy it. The only thing I didn't mind was the lack of supernatural signature moves and things were more rooted in reality, but I feel like that would end up happening if this manga got a longer runtime than it did.

Overall, Robot x Laserbeam is just disappointing as a manga. There's just way too many missing story sections to make it something worth anyone's time. The characters just felt like a carbon copy of Kuroko characters and it was very hard for me to dissociate with that parallel once it was made. It's just kind of sad how it got cancelled by WSJ after 62 chapters and I feel like if it was serialized in a different magazine (Jump SQ for example), it would've been better for the story/pacing.