Zetman is great, art and battle sequence wise. But my main problem is the development of character and plot. Sure the character and evol designs are amazing, but the fact that Jin fell in love with Hanako in the span of two or three days and then the major time skips (5 years, then 2) that were done within the first fifty chapters or so, and then the old guy losing motivation to create Zet - they all happened too quickly and seemingly without reason. Also I don't know what purpose Konoha really serves other than to be a link between Jin and Kouga and to be the 'light' even though now Hanako is technically the heart of Jin (?). I mean the battles are great but I really feel like the story lacks character and plot depth to make it a true masterpiece.

From my experience(as i read bout 470 mangas,and finished about 70 mangas,mostly Shounen,Romance & Seinen) I can say-THIS MANGA IS BRILLIANT!Artwork is excellent ,storyline superb.This manga is gem in the sea of mud.
Story follows two young man-one with nothing,one with everything.Their lives intervene,having influence in others lives.
Theres great action,suspense,drama,romance
For those who complain about Kouga and longer storytelling-he is a main character too.I mean what kinda main char is when you know nothing bout him.
Read it-you wont regret it

Though i'm only up to chapter 60, i still feel adamant about this story's potential. I highly recommend it not for its art, or its storyline, but rather for what Kastura is trying to convey. While the true storyline is about a boy (Jin) with supernatural powers that fights for justice, Kastura doesn't jump right into the 'superman' glory. Instead, he writes out the struggles and problems he faces before he reaches his true glory. And what is even more pleasant is how Kastura tries to portray the difficulties Jin's rival faced during his adolescence.

Even amidst all the gore and nude women, the author still strikes out at the reader with the flaws in the heroes' ideology. What is justice? How do we decide what is right and what is wrong? Initally, we see two opposing sides where everything is black and white, however as the story progresses, we all see one common similarity between both the heroes and the 'players' and that is the search for belonging.

The author portray the struggles of the rich and the difficulties of the poor, however, characters from both social classes all crave for someone's love. Once they lose that, the traumatic circumstances these characters experience give them the impetus to protect those around them. Once again, I highly recommend this manga to those who deem themselves to be mature enough to handle the gore and the nudity, for without a critical mind, you ultimately lose the true meaning of the story Kastura conveys.

i love this manga, and i love it for many reasons, the three top most being the characters, the story and the art, the characters all have depth, none of that damn 2-d shit you get in manga like bleach, the story has real tradgedy, a happy ending is by no means a fore gone conclusion, and the art is so clear i considered consulting my optometrist to review my options

This is not your average superhero manga and that's what I like about, from the bits of romance(although I wish there was more of it) to the mature growth of the main character it portrays a realism in the manga. Although I didnt like when they switched the main character to kouga for 20+ chapters.

So many people keep comparing this to Gantz but the 2 are completely different. Sure they both deal with killing monsters but apart from that and the dark themes they're both different.

Gantz in my opinion is the most exciting seinen manga I've read, yet there is too much left unexplained about the plot and we're already at the 300 chapter mark. On the other hand Zetman is far more deep and purely focused on development of it's characters and story until now that we can enjoy the chapters from 70+.

Well I've written a review that gives a more uniform view of my opinion on the manga.

Zetman is an extremely brilliant manga. It's kinda like Devilman. Jin is a really good character. Kouga is a good character too.I like all his justice talk. I don't know why people don't like Kouga.

The only complaint I have is that it took about 70-80 chapters for things to really get super-kickass in the story. Mangaka really took his time for character development, but as of chapter 104, it seems to have paid off superbly. After reading I''s, which is a shounen romance manga, I can't believe a seinen manga of this intensity coming close in violence to Gantz was from the same author. Beautiful art and exciting story. Brilliant.

... Last updated on February 17th, 2009, 8:07pm

Very good series, extremely deep in its execution. The author did an awesome job in this manga, because you never feel as though anything is out of place. Sometimes, I felt as though the story was too slow or boring even, but the one thing that was constant was that I felt that everything that was happening in the story was necessary to the whole experience. Everything flows so well in Zetman: the action, the drama, the evolutions, the character interactions, etc. Great piece of work, definitely recommended for those action/heroic plotline lovers out there.

Zetman is a very old projected that was previously made into a oneshot, then only eight years later it got its own series which managed to last for twelve years!

The author is undoubtedly great, his drawings are detailed and have a very heavy tone that perfectly fits for a seinen. Samewise, he manages the manga's atmosphere perfectly, although it quickly becomes way too violent with a lot of uneeded murders or, worse, 'rape' scenes thrown around all the time during one part of the manga (which thankfully stops completely later on).

This manga thus has a very good foundation: an interesting story that's well managed, good characters (and most noticeably, some of them like Kouga are personas that we rarely see, although a lot of people seem to hate it) and a decently built universe, but the unfortunate part is that it simply keeps dragging for too long. While it may captivate you at first, it's no longer the case after fifteen volumes of nothing interesting happening and no progression to the plot, which many arcs focusing on different characters without really explaining why or even giving any reason for why some events happen.

The plot is simply too much of a mess for the reader to care, at some point. It just makes no sense, summing up the bad guys are 'incarnation of chaos' is the best explanation I can possibly come with. There's too much twists to even understand what's going, the characters have changes of heart every two chapters and people keep getting killed and resuscitated every volume. You just can't follow anything.

To take an early example, why is one character thrown into a massacre disguised as a training for him to learn justice? This kind of thing keeps happening throughout the story, with some parts explained and some others which are not. The protagonist and deuteragonist do one thing then another, the bad guys do one thing then another, then there's more bad guys and you never know what they're fighting for.

It's very unfortunate, knowing that halfway through, things still made sense and could be concluded in a much better (and perhaps shorter) manner. Unfortunately, the story doesn't even have a conclusion but seems to be a build up for an 'act 2' which I fear will also be quite long.

I write this with regret, as I really used to love Zetman and am very attached to the characters and its universe. Nonetheless, although Zetman kept getting worse and worse, it was still good and I still liked it: if I could read something up to the end without dropping it, then it's not that bad. It is surely worth reading and has its own good points.