Zatch Bell

Review covers all of the volumes released so far

Pokemon. There, I've said it. Children love it, and it has become Nintendo's most famous cash-cow. Personally, I loved the original video-game but I don't respect any of the money-grabbing spin-offs. I'll pass on the trading card game, thank you. No, I don't want to watch the Pokemon anime, I've seen a bit and it's rubbish. As for the Pokemon Manga, I daren't even go there.

But Nintendo does not have any kind of exclusivity right on the concept as a whole. If you feel in the mood and want to read something that is not Pokemon, but is in the same vein, then one Manga that's quite good is Zatch Bell.

Comparing Zatch Bell to Pokemon is probably quite unfair, but the story of the series could be described as “like Pokemon, except decent.” A hundred demons and their spellbooks have been sent to Earth, with the goal of fighting each other until only one is left, at which point the winner will be crowned as the Demon King and get to rule over the demon world for the next thousand years.

(Oh, but this Manga is aimed at younger children, so all uses of the word “Demon” have been renamed to avoid offending anyone.)

There is one important catch in the way they must fight, which brings comparisons to Pokemon: while the demons have strong powers, these can only be activated by a human reading from their spellbook. So the demons must find a human, preferably someone mean, greedy and/or manipulatable, then convince them that they stand to gain from working together.

That's the basic story anyway, but things are not quite as simple as the competition between 100 demons. The demon world can apparently be quite a nasty place, and some of the demons in the competition are just happy to have a holiday, or meet new people. Some even try to find an adoptive family and blend in as a human. Far from being a mindless Pokemon clone, the setup is actually quite interesting.

The basic staple of Zatch Bell is action. If someone were to flip open any book in the series, then they'd find that it's mostly action. If you don't like action, then don't even bother with this series, it's that simple.

However even if you do like action, you might still want to give Zatch Bell a miss owing to the way it is handled. At 25 volumes currently, and with 8 still to come, it's a very long series. And most of that length is made up of repetitive and predictable fight scenes.

Now if you really appreciate action Manga then you might raise an objection to me labelling Zatch Bell as repetitive and predictable. True, the author has put a lot of effort into planning and drawing each fight scene, and each fight usually has a unique plot twist or element. However no matter what the fight, the same thing always happens. The villains will always start out by bringing the protagonists to their knees, however they can never finish them off as the protagonists are protected by painfully obvious character shields. The protagonists will then either prevail, talk their enemies over to their side, escape or be rescued. Those four playouts happen again and again.

So, could I recommend Zatch Bell to you? Well, if you're a busy person, then probably not. It's obvious that the author is spinning out and artificially lengthening Zatch Bell's run, at the price of introducing a lot of repetition. But if you can live with that and want a good action Manga to bite into, and lots of it, then Zatch Bell might be what you're looking for.