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.

First of all I love the first chapter, it's an amazing start. It tells you what you need to know in an entertaining way as well as jumping quickly into the plot. You don't feel confused and everything is clear from the start. It's entertaining and makes you want to continue reading. I am someone who tends to find first chapters to be either boring or confusing, so seeing how great it started just made me confused as to how this didn't get popular.

The mangaka Yusaku Shibata was an assistant for both One Piece and My Hero Academia, this was pretty obvious from looking ... at his art which has a few hints from both of these mangas. I personally found these hints to be very subtle, it's not really something that you think about while reading.

The characters were pretty interesting, more specifically the main character and his twin brother. The main character, Kaname, is strong, hardworking and determined. He is scary looking and his stupidity makes him oblivious to how terrified everyone are of him. His goal was to be the main character, the hero, from his favorite show.
While his younger brother, Koshiro, on the other hand is calm, a genius and cunning. He is adored by all and very well know for his inventions. This lead to Koshiro being targeted. Koshiro and Kaname are the opposite in a lot of things, yet they share one similar goal that they've competed in since they were kids. They are eachothers biggest rival. Though one trait they share is that both of them can be a bit hotheaded at times.

Now the one character that I do have a problem with is Cheena the love interest and childhood friend of the brothers. She is a extremely stereotypical female lead, no personality, constantly gets into trouble and getting kidnapped resulting in the male leads having to save her, being unable to defend herself despite being able to fight, always being the one to worry about the male leads health, etc.

Now this manga is cancelled and that is something you could tell in the story because the pacing shifts. This manga did have potential and I am actually a bit sad by the fact that it was cancelled. It would have been interesting to see a manga about a boy being inside of his brother (yes I had to word it that way), in order to fight the bad guys and figure out why they wanted to get rid of Koshiro.

Overall it was an enjoyable read.

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.