The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

Robotics;Notes

What's It About? 

The year is 2019, Steins;Gate world line "1.048596%".

On the island of Tanegashima, augmented reality has exploded in popularity and robots are becoming last year's fad. In danger of being closed, the Chuo Tanegashima High School Robotics Research Club decide on one final project… to build their own GIANT ROBOT!

Robotics;Notes manga is based on the visual novel and has a story by 5pb. and art by Keiji Asakawa. The English translation is by Andrew Hodgson with lettering by Andworld. Published by Udon Entertainment (October 31, 2023).

Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Giant robots are cool! That is the ethos present throughout this first volume of Robotics;Notes. This is a classic underdog story of two high schoolers trying to scrounge up enough material to enter a big robotics competition before their school club disbands. Scratch that, the two of them work together, but the majority of the book is about our two leads being at odds with each other. One is adamant about getting this robot ready by any means necessary, while the other seems more focused on securing a higher position on the leaderboard of one of their favorite fighting games. Robotics;Notes has a lot of things going for it. It's an homage to many popular franchises like Gundam, and if you were ever a robotics nerd, then the story was tailor-made for someone like you. We don't get to any of that robot-on-robot action until two-thirds of the way into this three-hundred-plus page book, but when we DO get there, it is exciting and enthralling!

My biggest problem with the story is the characters and dull back-and-forth dialogue. There is a lot of subtle storytelling going on in the background. Clearly, this world isn't normal due to some prior event, and it's affected our two leads. There's a lot of history that isn't spelled out, and while that mystery can be exciting, it's hard to invest in these revelations due to the lack of chemistry between our two leads. They spend a lot of their time clashing rather than actually working together, and while there is camaraderie there, the tension between them is drawn out way too long to the point where it affects the overall pacing of the story. I was bored for almost half of the book, and I usually don't get bored with science-fiction stories. This could be a fun time, but it asks a lot to get into the good parts.