Dec 2, 2024
The Robotics;Notes manga is hands down the most consistent of the western released SciAdv manga. With beautiful and entertaining art, as well as a couple of creative liberties taken with the source material, the crew in charge of making this manga were able to create an entertaining and coherent adaptation of the Robotics;Note visual novel with very few drawbacks. Although not perfect, it manages to convey the entirety of the story without too many sacrifices and even improves the original story in some instances.
The most appealing part of the R;N manga is the art. Characters like Kai and Akiho are infinitely more expressive in the
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manga than the original visual novel, and this helps the story massively. Kai has a bit of a cardboard personality in the VN, and since the story is literally from his perspective we rarely get to see his reactions. Akiho has an overbearing personality, and is often told that she's only able to get away with her antics because she's cute. This doesn't come across all too well in the VN where the 3d character models severely limit the expressive capabilities of characters. The artist likely saw this as an affront to God, as he took each and every chance possible to draw Akiho and the rest of the cast as emotive as possible. In the case of Akiho, he cranks up her "cuteness" by 11. This improves her character monstrously. Before she comes off as simply annoying, self-centered, and whiny. Now, while she is still all of those things, the delivery of those moments is far more tolerable and quite funny.
As for the pacing? While it starts off strong, the latter half of the story is compressed and rushed pretty bad. I would say its still understandable, with the writing team making a few changes in order to make the ending more satisfying and comprehensible, but we still lose out on some character development. Phases 6 & 7 are cut from the manga entirely, but changes were made to accommodate this. Junna doesn't seem to have the same crippling fear of robots in the manga, and her grandfather was simply slightly irritated at her for damaging a few robots instead of pushing her away over his intense guilt of not supervising her enough. Because of this, they were able to make up over the span of a couple of pages instead of needing a whole character arc. Frau Bow's arc was also removed, with the 2019 solar flair being glossed over almost entirely. Her character however is mostly the same as in the VN, unlike Junna. Because of this, the manga literally ends with Kai going to visit her, implying her character development happens offscreen. This isn't horrible, but it isn't great either. Nae's arc is heavily condensed but remains intact, with her still going on a beach date with Kai. Airi's arc is also rushed, but they managed to keep the important parts with her "big twist" and the scene was still very emotional. Phase 9 is speedran pretty hard as well, with the story cutting from Kai promising to go to the expo with Akiho to present Gunbuild-2 immediately to the expo being raided. Sawada's reveal also had to be tweaked, as Kai had no idea who he was unlike in the VN. Other than that, some more changes were made here and there, but the manga ultimately managed to stick the landing with the ending. The action sequences are all amazingly done as well, with the final fight being very entertaining.
All in all, the Robotics;Notes manga manages to tell an emotional, fun, and visually appealing story that allows it to more than stand on its own as a SciAdv manga. I would definitely NOT recommend someone read this instead of the visual novel, but I do think it get the job done. If you have read the visual novel, I heavily recommend you get this manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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