ZIPMAN!!

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

ONE SHOT ActionZIPPO!!

REVIEWS

• 

  MasterCrash

  40/100
  Another victim of serial axe murderer Shounen Jump

  Since Mangaplus was released a year ago, I've read a lot of manga from Shounen Jump that have been abruptly canceled, manga that never really had the time to shine or to improve, but I never really felt like reviewing one of them until now. So you ask "Why Zipman!!? What does it have to make you want to write a review about it?"
  Nothing. I'm in self-isolation for about a month now, I'll review a rock at this point, Jesus Christ.

  Zipman!! was written by mangaka Yuusaku Shibata and was released in the first edition of Weekly Shounen Jump in 2020, and by that I mean it was released in December of 2019, but they say it's issue #1 of 2020, I don't really get it either. Generally these manga don't really get any kind of "hype" or big promotion behind them unless it's by a very successful mangaka like Samurai 8 by Kishimoto and now Burn the Witch by Kubo. So they're kinda dependent of the buzz that their initial chapter creates and, in all fairness, Zipman!! did create a decent share of buzz, so lets check out why.

  

  At first glance you can tell why this caught the attention of people. It's My Hero Academia! Well, not exactly, but it's super hero themed and the art is very similar to our favorite ongoing super-hero themed weekly manga from Shounen Jump that isn't written by ONE. Now, this is easily explained, the mangaka worked as an assistant for MHA and it's not totally unheard for people to have similar drawing styles to their mentor. I'd be more mad at it if the author had the style, but not the quality, but he does! Sure, it's not yet at the level of Horikoshi, but Horikoshi has some of the highest quality in artstyle that I've ever seen in a weekly release. Shibata isn't as good, but no question about it, he is good. The character designs of the characters are very appealing, the robots throughout the series look pretty great and the double spreads almost make this worth a skim, but the art isn't the only thing to a manga.

  To begin with, this manga to survive already needs to establish that it's different enough from MHA that makes it worth staying alive in the same magazine, specially with how rutheless Jump is with their cancellations. But to give credit to Zipman!!, Zipman!! isn't really a rip-off of MHA, but rather a callback to shows like Ultraman and Kamen Rider.
  It all starts with our hero, Tatara Kaname, a avid fan of super-hero shows, trying to get cast as an actor for the show Jackman, one he's been a fan since child, and Kaname has all the moves for the job, he's a bonafied action movie actor, but he's missing on a key point, his face being ultra scary, which makes him get the role as a villain, but he declines and goes back to mourn his dead twin brother.
  Look, there's a lot to unpack here, I'm sorry.
  Things go awry when he gets a message from his dead brother to meet him, while at the same time that a giant robot starts attacking the town, I said there's a lot to unpack. At the spot, Kaname finds a robot suit that enables him to fight and destroy the robot. The first chapter ends with the reveal that the dead brother's conscience is trapped inside the robot.
  It was an alright chapter, it had a lot, even more than the things I mentioned, including a love interest, but it was around 50 pages long and the pacing was quite decent, when I finished reading it though, I wasn't sure it was enough to avoid cancellation, but it had people talking about it, so maybe I was wrong.

  

  The next couple of chapters were alright, they followed an episodic premise of evil robot appears, our hero pops up and beats them, plus, it had the Megaman thing in which the hero actually got a power-up from the enemy. I think that last point could be enough for some interesting battles going forward, but it seemed like the power-up was always just a different kind of punch, so it didn't really add much to the story. It seemed alright for people who like those kinds of shows, which seems to be quite famous in Japan, but it quickly got stale.

  After some chapters of this we got into bigger arcs and this is when the manga felt flat for real, the pacing moved incredibly fast, the story became incredibly confusing, despite the actually simple plot, and it was all just a big mess.
  It felt like the author had got bored. After that arc, we got a time-skip, which time-skips at chapter 13 or 14 are red alerts that this manga is about to be discarded. Weirdly enough, the pacing of this arc actually felt better than the previous one, if you ignore all the unexplained developments, like the love interest girl now has a robot suit as well, okay, cool, why not? But a better pacing is pretty much the best compliment I can throw at this. I was never much invested in this story, and after skipping all of the character development, there was even less reason to care.

  

  With a story that went from okay, to stale, to a big mess to a overall meh, there's not much reason to justify recommending this manga to anyone. It felt pretty bland throughout. The good point here is the art, which I do want to see more, even if Shibata ends up only doing art for another writer.

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• 

  Kargo

  55/100
  A deserved axe but an unjust one.

  The story started very interesting. I was a huge fan of the art. It had a unique feel to the other manga that started somwehere along with it. The MC was extremely generic but likeable as always. The first few chapters were slowly starting to get interesting, however, the author started rushing things way before the first volume was going to even be printed. As it was very noticeable, the mc his brother nor the heroine received any sort of proper motivation except 'make girl smile'. Speaking of the heroine. Cheena has started out as a very outdated heroine that felt like a female characters from the 90s where most female characters didnt have much of a personality outside of being just the love interest the MC was gonna save enough times for them to marry them in the end. She didnt exhibit any sort of personal motivation or goals or even give a single reason why she as an individual should be in the story not for someone but for herself. Before anybody would ask 'There's no way to do that in only 10 chapters before getting axed' yes, it IS possible, it's possible to do that in the first chapter where you have 50+ pages to introduce the general premise and the first relevant characters and what happens? Kaname AND Koshiro's only motivation revolves around making Cheena smile, there is literally nothing about any other motivation that any of them could have except Koshiro's small signs of a complex towards Kaname. If maybe the author actually cared to give the characters some motivation that didnt hail out of an 90's anime then maybe it would've appealed to the modern audience. The series ended at 17 chapters therefore it's no wonder the antagonists were uninteresting as well. The only redeeming quality was their designs which i found very nice. Now for the power system. Nowadays worrying about creating an original power system shouldnt be an author's worry as stuff like Nen and Stands were basically stretching the last limits of originality. The key to creating a reliable power system is to make sure it's at least partially grounded in reality, allows for creative or wacky battles, makes sense within its own world. For example, Skyrim's 'power system' allows you to transmute iron to silver and silver to gold and seems to be a lower tier spell therefore why does nobody use it in Skyrim? How is it possible? What's used to actually transmute it. You simply can just because. And even at that point all you have to do is to at least include a few voice lines that mention the consequences of using that spell therefore it's forbidden to use it for personal gain. That way you could make it understandable even if there's no reason for why that spell exists. In Fullmetal Alchemist/Brotherhood, just the quote 'To gain something, something of an equal value must be given' which already implies there are conditions and consequences of using Alchemy and not everyone can use it. In ZIPMAN it seems any other bloke can put on a suit and suddenly become a warrior. How does that work? What are the limits of a suit? Why is Kaname able to 'merge' other abilities and stockpile them together, how are they synchronizable together if they were entirely different suits? There's nothing which makes the power system worse than DBZ's Ki which is generic as it is. Lastly, I believe the author of ZIPMAN simply got unlucky with how the japanese audience received it. Whether you like it or not, what counts first and foremost, IS how the japanese readers respond to the series and even if you think some series is the new GOAT and anybody who thinks otherwise has bad taste will mean nothing if they dont like it enough to support the official release. That said i believe only giving a series 1 volume to prove they're worth the investment but it is an incredibly oversaturated market and it's hard enough to have your series accepted let alone prosper. I believe if maybe the author took his time more and had a second chance before the axe he might've bee able to pull through
  To Summarize:
  Art: 7/10
  Characters: 2/10
  Plot: 2/10
  Power System: 1/10
  Overall imma give it 55/100
  Overall ZIPMAN compared to other newcomers Lacked an MC that had a solid motivation like Fafner, Likeability and attitude like Andy, even a wacky quirk like Mashle, a solid power system that could keep the reader invested like Undead Unluck and it didnt even have likeable character interactions which even Agravity Boys managed to do fairly okay. I hope the author will recognize what mistakes were made and will come back with series that will be able to accompany the great artstyle.

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