Ultimo

I came into this series not expecting much, but I was very surprised about the concepts that the manga is trying to achieve. If you are looking for something similar to Shaman King, then then this is not the series you may want to read, since this Ultimo has a different vibe from Takai's predecessor. The series Ultimo is based around the idea philosophers have been trying to figure out for centuries and that is what is truly more important within life, being good or being evil? And through this idea, our main antagonist Dunstan, who show similarities to Stan Lee, is trying to uncoverthe meaning through the 15 robot children he created to fight each other to find the meaning. There is a big focus on time travel, and reincarnation within this series, since every important character had some significance in there past lives, and each character is tied to Dunstan's plan to uncover the truth to his ultimate question. The layout of the manga is pretty straightforward, and it never strays away from it main objective, but I think there are many parts of the story where the journey become tiring and predictable, and often repetitive, since many of the same fights will occur over and over again. The characters were interesting, but many of them lacked depth. The main protagonist,Yamoto seemed very uninteresting and unreliable for the majority of the series, but he does make big strides in the last 2 volumes of the series. I think the best character is definitely Ultimo, since she shows the most growth throughout the series. The artwork is a hit or miss. I do like Takai's style, but often when there are fights that occurred between two Doujis, the fight would often become to chaotic, and the the line variety of the robots would often be hard to read. This led me to staring a pages for a few minutes to just find out what I was actually viewing instead of just admiring the two giant robots fight each other. The spotty artwork definitely alters the flow of the manga, and this may be a deal breaker to many people.