Hold on to your hat, because this ride goes fast.
To begin with, I have to say that I am not familiar with the manga. If you are, it may be better for you to skip this adaptation, because I've heard nothing but disappointment from manga fans on the pacing and what was changed in the adaptation. Since this was my only experience with Zetman, I can only comment on what the anime presented.
I do share the sentiment on the pacing, however. Zetman moves at breakneck speeds. For a story about a genetically engineered creature finding it's humanity, we only get little touches of what ultimately brings about this change while the show zips through a mountain's worth of world-building information. I perpetually got the feeling that I was only seeing the surface level of a much deeper and longer lasting work, since Zetman never dwells on one thing for very long. It feels like once a concept is introduced, the plot and characters are already moving on. Watching this show sometimes felt like looking out the window of a speeding car. See something interesting? Too bad, we already passed it.
Some parts of the show particularly suffer because of this, but Hanako is definitely the standout. She got the short end of the stick in terms of character development, since she was presented as a romantic interest that fell out of the sky. I never knew enough about her to get attached to her or even care about what ultimately happens to her. This is a pretty big flaw, since it's obvious that the show was going for shock value, but when a character has nearly nothing going for them in personality, any attempt to surprise me will fall flat. Instead, my reaction was more around the lines of: "Oh... That sucks, I guess?"
Haitani has a similar problem, but of the villain persuasion. We never fully understand why he's doing what he's doing or what he thinks he's going to get out of it. A lot of his actions simply didn't add up. If his goal was to ultimately bring Jin over to the Player's side, he did a horrible job of it. There's also a society of Players that allegedly want to live in peace, and have the Sweeper enforce their rules... But where were they during the final showdown? The pieces that are missing in the quick overview we get of how this world works doesn't completely pan out in some cases, making me think that vital information was skipped.
But where Zetman does hold up, it's surprising solid. The animation is fantastic, with deep lines and amazing detail on the faces. Like everything else in the show, the action scenes are quickly paced but are handled in such a way that other actions series should sit down and take notes. The design exists solidly in the divide between Japanese and Western animation. It's still technically anime, but I think that this is a great example of the blurring line between the two.
Once of the themes that the anime plays on to great success is Kouga's idea of "justice," which starts by mimicking a superhero he sees on TV as a kid and ends with him nearly going off the deep end to pursue his ideal. Strangely enough, through him we see how much Jin ends up changing from the first episode, when he couldn't even understand the concept of death. "What is justice" and "what makes a human" are two key questions asked throughout, and Zetman does a good job of building its two main characters through those themes.
In the end, even though at times it moved a bit too fast for my liking, Zetman was an enjoyable show. I definitely recommend it to fans who like their anime a bit more gritty. There's a lot of violence (this is a "dark" superhero story, after all) and some things just don't add up or play out, but if none of the above bothers you, there's an interesting story to be seen in Zetman. Faithfulness to the content and pacing of the manga aside, the anime does seem to accomplish what it set out to do. Best of the season? Probably not. Fun to watch? Definitely.
Images from Hulu.com.
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