Ultimo 1

Stan Lee / Hiroyuki Takei – Viz – 2010 – 2+ volumes

So.  Stan Lee.  I know a lot about comics, and have a substantial collection of stuff that is not manga, but there is a gaping Silver Surfer-shaped hole in my reading habits.  I have never touched a Marvel comic in my life.  It’s not even that they’re superhero comics, because I’m secretly a DC crossover masochist.  It just amuses me to know nothing about Marvel comics.  So I’m not familiar with the work of Stan Lee.

Having said that, I suspect his touch is rather obvious, and is reflected especially in the first chapter, where we are introduced to a battle between good and evil on its most literal level: a bored man making robots that fight that are named for which side they represent.  Also, the gigantic buff old dude does look like something you’d find in a Marvel comic.  Or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

In theory, the story is interesting.  I like the normal shounen manga storyline being boiled down to its essence like this.  I also tend to like stories that jump around in time, which this also does (the robots take their fight through time and dimensions).  But other than that, it hasn’t really fleshed itself out into anything interesting yet.  The good robot, Ultimo, has chosen a master who has been reincarnated and is currently a high school student.  He is reluctant to go along with the enthusiastic Ultimo’s insistence that their mission is to stop evil.  There are robot fights with transformations and claws that stab and secret power levels and whatnot.  New characters are introduced at the end that represent new “sides” to the battle and promise that things will get more exciting in the future.

Basically, all the pieces are there.  They are well-polished.  But they just aren’t interesting at all.  They are simply the necessary pieces to make a shounen manga.  There is potential to be interesting in the future, but a lot of plot and character development will have to take place first, and I find the trend in shounen series is that the most interesting volumes are usually the first several, and then they degenerate into something bland. On the plus side, there are only a couple characters representing a “good guy” posse, which means that my “too many characters” pet peeve might not rear its ugly head, or will take longer to do so than usual.

I haven’t read Shaman King, but I think that Takei’s art style adds a level of fun to the reading experience, as his character designs are just quirky enough to be interesting.

Well, it’s not boring, and it’s not bad. There are good things about it, and it does have an unusual beginning.  But it’s more of the same so far.  I’ll keep reading to see if it goes anywhere from here.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.