Forum - View topicHouse of 1000 Manga - Zatch Bell
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Hitokiri Kenshin
Posts: 291 |
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I liked this series and wish Viz had finished it. Own a few of the dvds and have the two fighting games for PS2. Few of my friends said they liked them as you can have little kids beat the crap out of each other.
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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Because like this article and some people in this thread have shown, people consider it a Pokemon rip-off. To me, calling Gash Bell a Pokemon rip off would be like calling JoJo's Bizarre Adventure a Pokemon rip off. Simply having something else fight for you (Stands, Demons) isn't the only defining trait about Pokemon, it also involves capturing and raising them and the entire world and system to be revolved around those creatures. None of those are present in Gash Bell. In most cases in Gash Bell, it's the demons who force the humans to help them fight in their battle royal game on who will be king. Gash Bell is one of my favorite shounen series. A nice cast of colorful characters, funny humor, great action scenes, a protagonist who isn't the typical idiot-who-loves-to-fight-and-eat, but is actually is an intelligent student who uses strategy in his battles. It's one of those series that knows how to go from completely stupid goofball humor to eye-watering serious drama and pull them both off extremely well from all the deaths and book burnings throughout the series. -Stuart Smith |
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PrimalX3
 Posts: 104 |
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This series had some of the best fight scenes I've ever seen.
 Ever. And the variety of attacks and how well drawn they were, the art itself , especially for the characters, was memorable and striking.
I never thought it was a pokemon ripoff. Ever. Now that I think about it, anybody that I know that has seen Gash didn't dislike it. I mean, if you see pictures of it without ever having watched the show, you'd probably think "This looks really strange. : S" But once you've watched the show, you understand how awesome it can be. And that is why they say don't judge a book by its cover and stuff, lol. |
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Just-another-face
Posts: 324 |
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By the time Zatch Bell came out here, Pokemon had already contaminated many a simple mind in the U.S. and so these contaminated simpletons basically used Ash can't catch 'em all as a very weak standard to judge anything that resembled "humans and their nonhuman partners" shows (including Digimon sadly, which was a better series on its own merits). I am so glad I avoided Pokemon like the plague. Even if I hadn't, I would never have used the words "Pokemon ripoff" like it was the hip thing to do. Last edited by Just-another-face on Sat Aug 23, 2014 2:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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That actually sounds awesome! 
Unfortunate to hear that the series was stopped...no point in my checking it out.
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Cyclone1993
 Posts: 947 |
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The same thing happened with Evangelion and Madoka. It gets kind of annoying seeing random comparisons made. Although I'm completely glad that I got to see both of those series. I haven't seen Zatch. But the description in the article is about how I interpreted the series. |
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koinosuke
 Posts: 271 Location: Fukushima, Japan |
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Honestly, the art design always drove me away from this one. Such incredibly ugly characters. I also have trouble understanding why Viz tried to push this one so hard; for all I know it could be very enjoyable and a worthy shonen manga/show, but I just can't imagine it would ever have caught on with kids in the West simply because the characters look so un-cool.
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Jajanken
 Posts: 680 |
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You guys are bringing up good points and some memories. I remember all my old friends always taking about pokemon then when I tried to introduce zatchbell they just called it cartoon crap. Western kids honestly judge too many things by the cover and dont appreciate the true merit of shows. Always just bandwagoning on the latest craze because others do it and not caring for the story. Even today with SAO and AOT. It was the same way when I tried to introduce beyblade and bdaman. I remember that even the voice acting for the gashbell dub was one of the best I've heard.
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Thatguy3331
 Posts: 1791 |
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Damn you Jason, you had to pick the one day where I couildn't get to an actual computer to talk about one of my favorite things to ever exist!
As a 20 year old I know it's not really that interesting plot wise nor particularly deep in it's character development with a story that could have gone in more interesting directions but never did, but you know what? I don't really care. I'm EXACTLY one of those weirdo's who loves series with this kind of style and back when I first read/watched it, it was both my first real expirience knowingly going through an anime/manga and the first time I choked up frequently at an animated piece that wasn't a movie. The void left in me after I finished reading the manga drove me to get into manga and anime for real (the very next series I went into was one piece) and it was the only time I ever made up stupid characters for fanfics (and like most fanfics they sucked). Yeah this was the shit for me back then, this caught my eye while for whatever reason Naruto and Bleach didn't. My favorite part is undoubtedly the whole Faoudo arc, when everything reaches a peak in terms of characterization and action, because while I do like the clear note arc, Clear pretty much came out of [expletive] nowhere and he was pretty much just an excuse so Gash wouldn't have to fight his friends. (Though that didn't lessen the emotional impact of their loses for me). The series not only was enjoyable for me but was also something of an inspiration for the type of artstlye I wanted to go after (though not as blocky) and while I love Animal Land for letting Raiku use his artwork for a better plot showing how he kind of grew as a writer, it's hard for me to say I like animal land over Gash if only because Gash means so much for me. As an anime I liked it enough but the Fadou arc got gyped and as a dub while I like the voices the direction was to saturday moring/after school special sounding to me. I know it's ultimately for kids and all but whenever they go into "THE POWER IS INSIDE OF YOU!!" scenes in the dub I almost always want to switch to something else. I sort of have to watch in in over passionatly acted Japanese.
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L stole my cookie!
Posts: 76 |
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I miss Zatch Bell a lot. I really want it on DVD but I would really prefer to have a subbed release. Did the dub change anything other than the dialog? If nothing major was changed, I wouldn't mind buying the box set.
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jr240483
 Posts: 4380 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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which is the reason why it bombed in the first place when viz tried and failed to make it kid friendly. hopefully it can get licensed by another manga company where it will be completely unedited. unfortunately it might not make a point since the manga itself is incomplete and that whole lawsuit with the author and the publisher really mucked things up for the series. |
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Lelouch Vi
Posts: 126 |
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Zatch is good
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Nonaka Machine Gun B
 Posts: 819 |
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The names. And the music. And the ending, by not dubbing the last ~40ish episodes. I didn't mind a couple of the voices. Debi Derryberry and Richard Horvitz somehow got swindled into doing an anime dub. |
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Gyt Kaliba
 Posts: 712 Location: Arkansas |
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It wasn't her first time doing an anime dub either, actually; though I'd imagine that Zatch, with his actual speaking lines, is probably more memorable than Ryo-ohki ever was. 
I've always been kind of halfway interested in this series, just never had a chance to check it out yet. Things like the insanity of Parco Folgore's song, and whichever character was rather gloriously voiced by Norio Wakamoto, really make it seem like the kind of series I might like. |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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Two things: firstly, I never said the censorship was "good." I hate all censorship. I meant it was no surprise it was censored so much, because Viz/ShoPro marketed it as a little kids' series (which is essentially is), and in the US, that means no guns, no punches to the face, no talk about death, etc. etc., blah blah. I never saw the anime except for some Kafka x Ponygon music videos I used to watch over and over, but the Viz manga is extremely heavily censored. Sadly, this was pretty typical from Viz in the 2004-2006 manga boom period, when they were hoping all their books would get carried by Scholastic Books and other outlets that were really overcautious about what they would allow.
Secondly, I apologize for insulting any 14-year-old readers by saying Zatch was "aimed at the 14-and-younger crowd" like this was some kind of bad thing. What I meant was that it's aimed at the younger age end of shonen manga readers, which I'm confident is true (based on the character designs and the Zatch-Kiyo big brother-little brother relationship, as well as all the poop jokes, of course). There are some fairly sophisticated moments in "Zatch", but there's also lots of little-kiddy silliness and, man, those designs! I'm sure Zatch had 8-year-old readers (approximate 'Zatch age') and 14-year-old readers (approximate 'Kiyo age') and 17-year-old readers... and I also know for sure it had over-30-year-old readers, at least this one 
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