Zipman!!

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Zipman doesn't deserve a 10, it's just that it deserves a better score and reputation than it's been given by other reviews and its general score. I wanted to give it a small bump so that others could give it a shot.

If you like the art and impactful moments of My Hero Academia, you'll absolutely love the first handful of chapters, and maybe a few moments sprinkled throughout the rest of this short-lived manga. The creator worked under MHA's creator, and the inspiration is clearly there.

What you should expect is to really love it at first, then realize that the last 75% of the manga ... is basically a summary of what should have taken place over a much longer period of time. Everything is EXTREMELY rushed because the series was cancelled prematurely.

I personally still found it enjoyable. This series had among the strongest and most impactful introduction chapters I've ever read, a single moment of humor that made me laugh out loud (which has never happened before), and a few emotional moments which got me good.

What happened to this series is a real shame, but I would still recommend the read.
Despite everything, I still consider it better than most manga/anime.
It managed to hit me stronger and more frequently in its 17 rushed chapters than most full series have. Hell, I made an account just to leave this review because I wanted people to give it more love.
Give the first 3 chapters a shot.

This series had a ton of potential but from what other reviews have said and what Ive seen online the series apparently got cancelled. This shows from around chapter 5-6 and the pacing after this point is utterly terrible. This is probably not the authors fault due to cancellation but this ruins the fights and story progression. The pacing seemed rushed from the start but it didnt get to the point that the story started to suffer until around this 5th chapter point.

The artwork is honestly incredible, with cool action scenes and a lot of creative character and weapon designs. The author was an assitant ... for Oda and Horikoshi and the inspiration is obvious once you know this. The artwork looks like MHA mixed with the unique character and weapon design from One piece. The originality and creativity of honestly everything in the artwork is super cool, but falls short because of the rushed pacing. If this series would have followed the same plot over like 40-60ish chapters it would have been a solid 6 or 7 out of 10.

I could go on and on but overall the pacing just ruins the cool and unique ideas behind the story.


Spoilers now -

More on pacing - THeres a lot that just doesnt get explained because the pacing is so fast. The backstory of Steel-X and the team is glossed over. The story also just completely skips over Cheena discovering that Kaname is Zipmann, which could have been a cool reveal but is just explained in 2 pages as Kaname joins the team to help fight against the chairman and his goons.

All of the fights last less than a chapter, each of which could have been at least 3-4 chapters and actually had plot progession and background on making Zipmann grow in strength. There is also just bare explanations of many plot points, attacks, and how the tech behind all of the mechs work. Again, this is due to the pacing and story being cancelled but even 10-15 more chapters in total for the series could have allowed it to be a solid short run shonen.

Overall - 5/10 just for the artwork and originality, could have been much better with fleshed out storylines but like I said like 50 times in my review the pacing and cancellation of the series forced it to skip over many story points, backstories, emotion, fights, and explanations of anything that is happening.
Classic SJ series being cancelled, what can you do

Zipman!! is a weird case of cancellation. I don't know what happened with the series, but it feels like the author was notified that the manga was going to be axed only 5 or so chapters in, which is unusual even for WSJ's standards. It's not unusual for WSJ series to get axed 17 or so chapters in, just like Zipman!!, but what happened with this particular series makes it feel like it was doomed from the very start.

Zipman!! imo had a very good first 5 chapters, the pacing was just right, the art was appealing and the plot was also interesting. Unfortunately, with ... the turn from chapter 5 to 6 everything changed. The manga suddenly got super rushed and the entire evil organization of the story attacked the MC at the same time. A different villain was defeated every single chapter and then at the end of this arc the story got into a time skip and the pacing just got even faster. The plot gets even more confusing going forward, and there was a new group of villains that the heroes were supposed to fight, but they just fought one and then skipped right to the final boss, probably because the cancellation was imminent.

The only interesting villain in the manga, imo, was the villain in chapters 2, 3 and 4, that was a guy crossdressing as a robotic girl and wanted to forcefully tell society to change their preconception towards his and others' similar habits. That was a pretty fresh take for a battle shonen manga, unfortunately that was about where the manga lost its interest for me. All other subsequent villains neither had a proper introduction nor a backstory or explanation to their motivations/goals. They were essentialy just fodder for the MC to shine while defeating them.

One interesting gimmick from the series was how the robotic suit of the MC could take powers from his opponents, kind of like Mega Man. But then they just threw that out of the window and started giving random power-ups to Zipman just so that he could defeat the villains.

The plot just gets worse from here on out, with a bunch of asspulss, confusing and unexplained events and a random final villain that we the readers never got a proper introduction from. I'm pretty sure even his name is not known, he just does evil things for no reason and no explanation.

Zipman!! was a manga that had a lot of potential imo. It was really unfortunate that it got axed so early but at the same time it's no surprise since the manga was only really interesting for 5 chapters. I hope the author can come back one day with something better, because not only is his art very good but he also has shown to have good writing skills, at least for the initial part of this manga.