Zatch Bell: The Best Shonen No One Talks About

Zatch Bell is one of the greatest shonen of all time.

Nobody talks about it,

Nobody makes Youtube essays on it,

But it’s true.

Zatch Bell takes a hundred shonen tropes and turns them on their head. It’s seemingly aimed at a younger audience, but its emotional peaks reveal a maturity that rivals any of the big shonen series and in many cases surpasses them. It’s simple but subtle and has lessons to teach the old and the young alike. The combat is tactical, and so brilliantly thought-out that it’s worthy of being held alongside JoJo’s as an example of how to write intelligent characters using their abilities intelligently. It’s also funny as hell. Zatch Bell might not be perfect, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a hidden gem that deserves far, far more discourse than it receives.

First, a note: I’ll be making a special exception in terms of spoilers for this article because I want people who have never read the series to be able to read the whole article. This is as much a sales pitch as a retrospective. In order to be able to talk about spoilers without spoiling anything, I’ll be describing many events in vague terms and without names or abilities being specifically mentioned as much as possible. Hopefully, this will get both old fans and new readers interesting in giving it a look. If people really like this article, I could easily be persuaded to write a more spoileriffic version where I can go in-depth on The Cool Stuff.

This retrospective will not be a simple summary of Zatch Bell, but instead a look into several mechanics of the series in order to reveal the depth that they so unassumingly guard. The sections are as follows:

• What Is Zatch Bell?
• Books and Needing Them: Zatch Bell and the Battle Royale Genre
• Books and Reading Them: The Narrative Power of Partnership
• Books and Burning Them: The Narrative Power of Not-Death
• Spells and Speaking Them: The Depth of Zatch Bell’s Magical Nomenclature
• Spells and Casting Them: Strength From Within and the Mechanization of the Power of Friendship
• Spells and Learning Them: Lightning Bolts and Self-Actualization
• Friends and Fighting With Them: Multifaceted Tactical Combat
• Friends and Making Them: Zatch Bell’s Core Motifs
• Friends and Leading Them: What Is a King?

What is Zatch Bell?

Zatch Bell, or Konjiki no Gash!, is a Shonen manga by Makoto Raiku which ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 2001 to 2007. Here’s the premise: Kiyomaro Takamine is a very smart middle schooler who has no friends. His father encounters a strange li’l boy named Zatch Bell and sends him to Kiyo’s side in order to help Kiyo stop being such a know-it-all and make some frickin friends already jesus christ. But Zatch holds a mystery: he doesn’t remember anything about where he came from or who his family is, and he was found with a red book full of bizarre and inhuman symbols. Kiyo can read this red book, and when he reads from it Zatch fires a bolt of lightning out his dang mouth! Turns out, Zatch is a got-damn Demon Boy from the got-damn Demon World, sent to the human world along with 99 other demon children to fight for the right to become king in what is apparently a traditional deal that happens once every thousand years. As far as the Demon World goes, the official translation calls the demons “mamodo.” The original Japanese word is “mamono,” and I prefer “mamodo” to “demon,” as “demon” just has the wrong connotations in English, especially considering that the mamodo world bears zero resemblance to any description of hell you could care to name. Anyway, they’ve got to fight!! But how? Easy: every mamodo child came with their own book. Somewhere in the world, they will find a human partner who will be the only person able to read the powerful spells inside and unleash the mamodo’s supernatural powers. Here’s the catch: If their book is burned, that mamodo is forcibly returned to the mamodo world to chill out for the rest of the battle, and they’re out of the running to be king. The last mamodo standing wins! That’s right, baby – it’s a Battle Royale!

Books and Needing Them: Zatch Bell and the Battle Royale Genre

At first glance, it doesn’t seem to be much of anything special. This is just a Battle Royale shonen, right? It’s just your Shaman King or your Law of Ueki or even, in a way, your One Piece or your Naruto. It’s just a kid who wants to be the best, and he’s gonna train and he’s gonna fight and there’s gonna be friendship and blah blah blah. Completely run of the mill. But that’s where you’re wrong. Zatch Bell does a few very important things that other battle royales don’t. The most important is the choice of protagonist. Zatch Bell is not a high-schooler with incredible powers. He’s not even a middle schooler with incredible powers. This kid is like ten years old, and he’s being forced to fight in a battle that he honestly doesn’t want to be in. (For the first volume, it’s a fight that he doesn’t even know is going on.) Despite the fact that it’s children fighting the battles, they’re not any less grueling or emotionally traumatic, and there are plenty of times when we see Zatch, Kiyo, and other main characters struggling with the losses and sacrifices they have suffered. The mamodos’ age and innocence also play an important role because it enables them to grow in an authentic way that younger audiences can resonate with and older audiences feel pride for.

Speaking of Kiyo, he technically has the full protag spotlight, and that raises another very, very interesting detail: The protagonist of this battle royale series in no way stands to personally benefit from victory. In fact, none of the human partners stand to gain anything at all from their mamodo becoming king. They can’t travel to the mamodo world. The mamodo world has zero interaction with the human world beyond sending their kids there to duke it out once every thousand years. Immediately and instantaneously, glory and power are off the table for the main character; he is fighting for someone else’s sake. And that choice is reinforced time and time again over the course of the series, to the point where Kiyo is willing to give his life in order to help Zatch become king. In fact, it’s not even about becoming king for Zatch, but I’m getting ahead of myself. That’ll come up later. But the thing is, it’s not just Zatch who doesn’t want to fight. There are lots of mamodo that are being forced to take part in the battle, some of whom have secondary battle-frenzy personalities programmed into them so that even if they don’t want to fight, they fight anyway. This is not like other battle royales because put simply, it’s a corrupt system. It’s unfair, it’s unkind, and it causes immense suffering. This isn’t like wanting to be Shaman King or Hokage – the shonen path to greatness that you follow to reach those goals is one of choice and passion. In Zatch Bell, the battles are of desperation, brutality, and coercion. The majority of mamodo we meet just want peace, in one way or another, and would never be fighting each other if there wasn’t a fight to be fought. This is all completely by design, and the brutal and unfair nature of the system is a large part of the motivation of our main cast, who ultimately come together because of their desire to put an end to the battle once and for all. 

Books and Reading Them: The Narrative Power of Partnership

In a shonen where the ability to fight is predicated upon having a strong relationship, it’s imperative that those relationships are believably and honestly written. Zatch Bell excels in this area, and the relationships between the characters are varied in type and skillfully executed without exception. Some partnerships feel as though they’re between siblings, sometimes between lovers, and sometimes one partner acts in a parental capacity. Every set of partners maintains a unique relationship, and in doing so they allow the manga to portray an incredible slew of role models for both healthy and unhealthy relationships while communicating the differences between the two through battle. The good guys have good and healthy partnerships, and the bad guys have unhealthy relationships in one way or another. (Generally speaking, anyway.) The examples of each are extensive and clearly written with heart, and whenever you think of one of the mamodos or book users in Zatch Bell, you inevitably and immediately think of them alongside their partner. Every character is contextualized by the partner, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that the relationships themselves count as characters in their own right. These relationship dynamics are also the rich substrate in which character change and growth occurs – indeed, the very first chapter of Zatch Bell isn’t an introductory fight that gets us excited for a battle but instead a chapter about Zatch trying to help Kiyo make friends. We don’t get our first honest-to-goodness mamodo battle until a chapter or two later, and this is actually more important than it first appears. The first installment of a series, no matter the medium, is nearly always meant to act as a sampler or an establishing shot to tell the audience what exactly they’re in for and what the author thinks is important about the work. In nearly any other battle shonen that you’d care to name, the first chapter has our main character fighting or learning to fight, or in general, just showing off their power so that the premise of the story is set. Zatch Bell begins with a relationship, and it begins with personal growth and change. This is Makoto Raiku’s way of telling us that this is not a shonen about fighting. It has battles, and they’re damn good and cool and exciting the way shonen battles should be, but at its core, Zatch Bell is not about fighting – it’s about relationships and how they can lead you to positive personal growth.

Books and Burning Them: The Narrative Power of Not-Death

Stakes in battle shonen can vary pretty wildly, from more mundane circumstances to universes hanging in the balance. But very few of them maintain constant life-or-death stakes. In Zatch Bell, the stakes for nearly every battle are the same: The loser gets their book burnt, and they are returned to the mamodo world. Exceptions to this rule are fairly rare, and no one is safe. This is, for all narrative intents and purposes, death. It is removing a person permanently from the dimension in which they currently exist, leaving behind the people they care about. In short, being returned to the mamodo world has all the narrative weight of death without being as violent or disturbing as death would be in a manga aimed at a younger viewership. Indeed, Zatch Bell’s violence is significantly toned-down from what you might see in other shonen. But this “not-death” is an incredibly useful space for the story to exist within. Because it’s not death, the audience doesn’t think “wow, people die a lot in this story, that’s kinda lazy,” instead they think “man, any of this mamodo I care about could leave forever.” The fact that it’s not death makes any plot armor significantly less noticeable – instead of our heroes narrowly escaping death, it feels more like they’re legitimately winning a battle. It also does away with the question of mercy, since it would feel a little strange for Zatch and Kiyo to just go around killing children. Burning books is a great way to engage the viewer, keep the stakes high, and sidestep squick. But guess what: because death is almost never on the table in terms of stakes, when it is on the table it holds a lot more weight than it does in other shonen where people die left and right. Some of the most emotionally powerful moments in the series come when a mamodo fights to protect his dying partner, or when a book owner lights their own book alight so that their mamodo returns to the demon world before they can die from their wounds. (though that method of book-burning does get a little more common towards the end of the series, which robs it of its power somewhat.) Zatch Bell doesn’t avoid death, it’s just not the goal or the point of the battles. In fact, trying to kill either the book owners or the mamodo would be significantly more difficult than burning the book. But the other wonderful thing about book-burning is that it allows us to see characters reckon with loss and grief even though their partners aren’t technically dead. Without exception, the appearance of mamodo in the lives of the book owners changes it completely, and losing your closest companion is gut-wrenching. There are dozens of tearful goodbyes in this series, some easier than others but none easy. If the stakes were death every time, the emotional impact of the story would be significantly less subtle. It’s also important that every time a battle occurs, the participants fight not only to support their friends and partners but to keep them, both literally and symbolically. If they don’t fight with everything they have, they might lose their friends forever. Now those are stakes.

Spells and Speaking Them: Zatch Bell’s Magical Nomenclature

Moving away from the emotional dynamics of the series for a moment, let’s talk about a particularly fun layer of Zatch Bell: the spells have a consistent and deep nomenclature system, built up of dozens of stems, prefixes, and suffixes. Some of these are very common, and some are so rare that you only ever see them in a single spell. Just as an example, I’ll put together a spell for you on the spot – let’s say you wanted a spell that lets you turn your arms into snakes. Why you would want a spell that does such a thing I don’t know, but let’s say you do. First, we need the ubiquitous “-ruk” suffix, which denotes transformation or reinforcement of the physical body. Then we’re going to use the “guno-” prefix, which represents the use of snakes in the spell. “Gunoruk.” Not too tricky, right? Although, technically, this would transform your whole body into a snake (or grant it snake-like qualities), so let’s also add the “amu-” prefix to lock the spell in on the arm. Great! “Amu Gunoruk!” What’s that? You want a spell that lets you fire snakes as projectiles? Okay! We’ll just change the suffix here: “Gunosen” will let you fire a snake easy as you like. Oh, but you wanted it to be multiple snakes, didn’t you? In that case, we’ll go for “Ganzu Gunosen,” since “ganzu” is a very common modifier that means the spell will have multiple hits or instances! If you wanted to fire just one big snake, it would be “Gigano Gunosen!” This is obviously just scratching the surface, but really think about how arbitrary most power systems and naming conventions are in the shonen genre, and indeed with magic in general. Even when it comes to hard magic systems in fiction, a consistent nomenclature is a rare thing! I personally think this is one of the coolest parts of Zatch Bell, and I just wanted to bring it to your attention. If you’re curious, you can always check out the wiki page for it! Though that will likely spoiler you, so maybe leave it alone for now. As you’re reading the manga, try and figure out how the naming system works for a fun little challenge!

Spells and Casting Them: Strength From Within and the Mechanization of the Power of Friendship

We’ve all seen it time and time again. The hero is beaten, bloodied, nearly unconscious. The villain has taken some damage, but he’s clearly got the upper hand and is about to deal the fatal blow. But then, one of the hero’s friends calls out to him from the sideline: “Don’t give up!” The rest of the team joins in. “You can do it!” “We’re counting on you, so… please….!” “You idiot, what do you think you’re doing? You can’t die here….” And our hero, thus bolstered by the Power of Friendship, rises up and unleashes a mega-attack, winning the day by a hair! It’s a trope as old as time, and everyone is either tired of it or at least fully aware of it. And Zatch Bell isn’t any different. Impassioned cries to friends or partners are often answered, and thoughts of the people you want to protect awaken newfound strength. No, Zatch Bell leans into all of these tropes about as hard as you could expect. But where the use of such tropes may be lazy in most series, these same tropes are part of what proves Zatch Bell’s inherent cleverness. Why? Because they are accounted for and mechanized within the power system. In Zatch Bell, you cast spells using what is eventually termed “strength from within.” If that sounds vague, that’s because it is – most emotions that are strong enough will act as a proper catalyst for a spell, and there are no objective measurements of strength from within because that would be like putting a number on a feeling. But you can absolutely run out of it. This isn’t a Fighting Spirit manga, where it’s dependent on your state of mind (though your state of mind has a definite influence at times, and a few spells actually require a certain amount of one emotion or another in order to be cast), nor is it the kind of manga where there’s much of anything you can do to recover or recharge your strength from within once it’s depleted. If you’re out, you’re out for at least a little while until it either recovers on its own or someone casts an (incredibly rare) spell that helps you recover some. The way this system is introduced is also extremely well-done; there’s a battle that occurs early on in which Kiyo tries to cast a spell and is shocked when it fizzles. The enemy has a good laugh about it and informs Kiyo about how spellcasting works. It’s also very clear that the entire battle was written in order to communicate the system of strength from within since the battle arose because the enemy was targeting random citizens in order to practice making the most of their reserves of strength from within. It also ends with the very first establishment of the mechanization of the Power of Friendship: Kiyo’s been fighting with rage and hatred for the entirety of the battle, then it fizzles out. He’s out entirely, right? But then a couple of his friends back him up, and he feels their support well up within him, giving him the passion and strength to cast the spell that wins the day. Isn’t that clean as heck? In a single battle, Makoto Raiku communicates nearly all of the relevant rules of strength from within. But even aside from that, the system is clean. Fiction runs on deus ex machina. We all know it, and we all accept it. But when a series relies on it too much, things can begin to feel a little too cheap. But Zatch Bell has a system in place to prevent that. By mechanizing the power of friendship, the deus ex machina that we all know to expect from said power of friendship is no longer a mere asspull but a legitimate mechanic that our protagonists use to their advantage. The fact that they fight in a team, that they trust each other and believe in each other, isn’t some kind of floaty “ooh the good guys win because they have friends” bullshit like in so many battle shonen – it’s a tactical advantage. Positive relationships and healthy emotional bonds literally give you better access to your feelings and make you more able to work with them! Our heroes do win because they have friends! And it makes perfect logical sense! This theme is reinforced often throughout the series, and it is to the author’s credit that Zatch and Kiyo never say “I must protect everyone myself and do this on my own.” That trope doesn’t occur once. They are grateful for their teammates and are always hoping to add more to their strength. One of my favorite panels in the series is a very simple one. It occurs in volume 12. Zatch and Kiyo have just been protected by their oldest teammates, and the panel itself is just Kiyo’s smiling face as he thinks “They’re so reliable.” Teammates and friends make you strong. Everyone knows it in every battle shonen, but nowhere is that concept earned so truly and honestly as it is in Zatch Bell. Strength from Within is yet another example of something that looks simple on the surface but that, when examined, reveals another layer of Zatch Bell’s depth.

Spells and Learning Them: Lightning Bolts and Self-Actualization

We’ve now learned the fundamentals of the combat mechanics: Your book has spells and you cast them using strength from within. But you don’t just get access to the entire spellbook straight off – you start out with one spell and earn them piecemeal as time goes on. This occurs through growth. Most commonly, what happens is a mamodo is faced with a situation that demands they gain a better understanding of themselves, what they want, how they feel, etc. When they face that adversity and grow as a result, a new spell appears in the book. This is important because the books are more than just a macguffin but a symbol of partnership and friendship between the human and the mamodo. On a metatextual level, the book is what keeps the mamodo in the same world as their partners – much the same way that friendship keeps two people in the same conceptual “realm.” The interesting thing about this is that it’s an entirely reciprocal process, too:

• Step 1: Mamodo faces adversity, reaches a new level of self-actualization
• Step 2: That self-actualization is transmitted to the book, which manifests that self-actualization as a new spell
• Step 3: The book owner reads the spell
• Step 4: The mamodo benefits

In short, self-actualization is a benefit for others, which is also a benefit to you. Being more honest and aware literally allows your friends to help you better than they previously could! By the way, everything I’ve just told you is more or less lifted straight from a chapter in which this process is explained! That’s right!! Not only are feelings explicitly mechanical in this battle shonen, so is personal growth! Who needs chakra, or ki, or any of that bullcrap? Other shonen beat around the bush. All of their flashy battles and elaborate magic systems are just allegories for the very concepts that Zatch Bell embraces and makes explicit. Their systems are just ways to mechanize friendship and believing in yourself without ever having to say it explicitly because it wouldn’t be serious enough for mere personal growth to make you better at wielding a sword. But deep down, we know that’s what it’s always about. In comparison, Zatch Bell is more honest and open, it feels its feelings with everything it can muster… and it is stronger because of it.

Friends and Fighting With Them: Multifaceted Tactical Combat

At this point, I think you’ve probably grasped that Zatch Bell is more clever and well-thought-out than you expected, and you’ve maybe even given it some credit for having interesting mechanics. But I haven’t talked about what makes a shonen a shonen: The battles themselves. All the mechanics in the world are worthless if the battles are boring! Thankfully, they rarely are: mamodo have an incredible range of spells and tactics that they’re capable of using, and we get a lot of super cool battles over the course of the series! The first glimmer of tactical combat in Zatch Bell comes early, in what I believe is the second or third chapter. Zatch and Kiyo are trying to stop a bank robbery, and Kiyo’s worried that if he fires a bolt of lightning at the bad guys it might A: kill them or B: not hit all of them and so they would kill the hostages. He makes a plan to fire at a nearby metal pole instead, hopefully spreading the electricity out and incapacitating the robbers without harming them. The plan gets foiled by Zatch being silly, but it really does a good job of setting up Kiyo as someone who considers his actions carefully, which continues to be the case throughout the series. The first aspect of tactical combat that I want to draw special attention to is the detail spent on the setting of each battle. There are no few arenas here; battles can happen whenever and wherever, and Makoto Raiku makes excellent use of each setting. In a battle where two unrelated citizens are trapped in an upstairs room, Zatch and Kiyo have to prioritize getting up to them and getting them out safely before they can concentrate on the fight. In an early battle at a botanical garden where the enemy can create plants from any angle, Kiyo devises a strategy to raise their response time so that they don’t get blindsided. In a battle against a mamodo with super-speed abilities, they take up position in a corner so that they can block off the approach with a shield spell, but the mamodo jumps over the shield! Kiyo of course planned for this, knowing that if the mamodo is in the air it won’t be able to avoid any attacks!! By the way, these are all super simple examples from early in the series. The really interesting stuff starts happening further in when the manga starts to spend more time focusing on battle and the team dynamic starts to form, so I can’t go into those in detail without spoiling them. But I think I’ve given you decent enough examples of ways that Raiku tries to put our heroes in a spot. Speaking of putting our heroes into a spot, I also want to bring back up exactly how limited strength from within really is. It’s something that Kiyo and all the book owners are constantly thinking about during battle, and running out even when you’re being careful isn’t uncommon. This mechanic introduces an inherent tension to the battles that’s almost similar to the time limits of Ultraman and other tokusatsu heroes: there will come a point when the hero can no longer fight, so they have to use their resources as wisely as possible. Kiyo rarely just throws out spells unless he’s certain he can get value out of it, and he always makes maximum use of his environment and his teammates. This doesn’t just go for Kiyo, and no matter how far into the story you get, none of the characters ever really reach a point where strength from within stops being a limitation. Up until very late in the game, good guys and bad guys alike will run out of power in the middle of important battles. Honestly, there’s so much more I want to tell you and so many cool fights that I want to spoil you on that I have to move on to a different topic, but I will say that approximately one-third of the fights in Zatch Bell are about Feelings, and aren’t super tactically interesting. Of the remaining fights, one third is pure tactics and the last third is a healthy mix. But even the least tactical battles are generally very pivotal and important for at least some of the characters involved, and I feel comfortable telling you that almost no fights in Zatch Bell will waste your time.

Friends and Making Them: Zatch Bell’s Core Motifs

This manga is about making meaningful friends and connections that help you grow as a person, simple as that. Every arc’s stakes are fueled by connections and by characters that other characters carry about. Even when it’s early in the series and the format is more monster-of-the-week, Raiku always takes time out to carefully articulate who we should care about before he puts them in danger or creates some form of stakes around them. There is no fight in Zatch Bell that happens just because. Every single one is built around either old characters or brand-new ones, and Raiku’s genius also becomes clear when you think back to all the side characters and realize you remember every single one of them. All the allies that almost-were, all the enemies that had their small-minded cruelties, all the dumb gags and the tearjerker side plots… they’re all important. Every encounter is important in some way, and the expanded cast is one of the great pleasures of the series.  But let’s talk about the filler. While being somewhat weak, it’s still an important part of the series once you realize what the series is about. Here, I’m specifically talking about the chapters in the first third or so of the manga that have no battles at all and are gag-focused chapters about Kiyo and/or Zatch’s hijinks around town. Sure, plenty of good shonen have filler chapters, but the early parts of Zatch Bell have so many of them that it’s almost a 70/30 shonen/gag manga split. Why?? Why is there so much… fluff? Well, the answer is that there isn’t fluff, because the gag chapters aren’t fluff. Some of the chapters are about Kiyo making friends at school – watching him gain their respect and get closer to them is really sweet, and the gags are just a bonus. In the Zatch gag chapters, we watch Zatch get thrown into situations where he has to grow up a little bit. They’re all very lighthearted and don’t have as much impact as the more serious moments, but I think it’s important that Zatch Bell recognizes the fact that the path to growth isn’t solely through battle, and that battle isn’t the sole purpose of growth. Growth is about how you live your life, and about the people you surround yourself with. It’s about bettering yourself in your everyday experiences, not just in the extremis of magical battles. Also, let’s talk about the villains of Zatch Bell. Some of them are just mooks, exaggerated mustache-twirlers set up so that someone we care about is put in danger. A lot of earlier fights are set up this way. But there’s something special about the way Zatch Bell treats its villains: at the beginning of each volume, there’s a page of art to introduce the volume, right? And on that page, every time is a shot depicting how a mamodo and human pair met for the first time. And, every time, that picture is of an enemy team. There are never any word bubbles and it’s only a single shot, but whenever you see it the situation immediately becomes clear and you are given a surprising amount of information about the backstory of the human and the backstory of the partnership. One of these expository frontispieces that sticks in my head is an image of the human partner in a dark alley with a knife in his hand, clearly about to accost or perhaps kill someone, looking terrified because the mamodo has popped out of the darkness behind him and has an arm wrapped over his mouth. In an instant, we know: the human is a thief or an assassin, and his mamodo is even better at it than he is. (Considering the mamodo’s spells are shadow-based, it’s a good match!) It’s details like this that really elevate even minor villains in this series. How about a minor villain that just shows up for a single fight in volume 8? The mamodo has wings, and his spells mostly revolve around using them for high mobility. He’s got a bit of an aviator aesthetic, as does his book wielder. It’s obvious just from looking at them and looking at the way they talk to each other that they really get along! These guys don’t even get any exposition, they just show up! But Raiku always leaves us a crumb or two that just lets us know these guys have a history together, the same way as the protags do. Zatch Bell doesn’t have many major villains, about three or four of them, and while a few of them do have interesting backstories and motivations, I think it’s the middle-level enemies that really interest me. Often, these enemies are morally grey but not evil and have strong bonds of teamwork – they’d have to have strong teamwork in order to survive as long as they have. Some enemies are just plain fun, some are terrifying, some become allies later on, and some have their books burned by a third party once they decide to change sides.

There’s a lot of Talk no Jutsu in Zatch Bell, but it’s always earned because the enemies are rarely evil. When they can talk somebody out of doing the wrong thing, it’s only ever because that enemy already had misgivings about what they were doing in the first place. Maybe it gets sentimental, maybe it lays things on a little thick, but I still buy it and I think it’s earned. A lot of my favorite characters in Zatch Bell are enemies or side characters that were only around for a chapter or two. They feel like they’re my friends as well as Zatch and Kiyo’s friends. Like people I don’t know well, but that I’d be happy to get to know better. This doesn’t really extend to kiyo’s classmates – I feel comfortable saying that they’re mostly treated as gag fodder and don’t have much depth to speak of – but so many of the one-off and side characters have real heart put into them. Raiku Makoto cares about his characters. He treats them as if they’re real, and he doesn’t just put them into a box when he’s done with them. At the end of the series, you’re treated to some montages of nearly all the characters that have been introduced, and… you remember them. Because in Zatch Bell, the characters are the story. The faces you see aren’t just a foes’ gallery; they’re the story compressed into the faces of those you have fought beside and against. Granted, Zatch Bell isn’t special for doing this. Most successful narratives have characters as a cornerstone. But I do think that Zatch Bell is special for how completely it commits to character as the driving force of the entire narrative. 

Friends and Leading Them: What Is a King?

A story about becoming shaman king, or Hokage, or king of the pirates, or any other kind of person with authority, must spend at least some time with the protagonist learning what their responsibilities will be and slowly acquiring the skills they will need. Zatch Bell is no different, but the core responsibility that Zatch chooses is one of the things that truly sets the series apart: Zatch does not really want to be king. He has to be king because no other mamodo will be a kind king. It is the revelation of the cruelty of the battle that inspires him to take up the call, and he fights purely for the cause of ending the suffering. He fights not to win, not to prove his bullies wrong, not to be the greatest at anything or recognized for his hard work, but to simply be in a position that must be filled by someone kind. Not because he wants it, but because he knows that if he (or the teammates he later makes) doesn’t win, someone who is not kind might. In a series that has many departures from the shonen formula, this, to me, is the most profound of all. He fights for the right to be kind to those who need it. Zatch is always struggling to learn more, to be a better person, to better understand what it truly is to be a king. He learns piece by piece and step by step, and each time he reaches a new threshold of understanding you cheer for him as a parent cheers for a child. He’s found the right answer, the kind answer, and you are proud of him. He forgives his enemies for their lack of kindness, for he knows that the system gives them no choice. If any of his trusted friends became king, he’d have no problem with that. This too is an important departure from battle royale shonen: If someone besides Luffy becomes pirate king, it would be weird. If someone besides Naruto became Hokage, it would be weird, wouldn’t it? But I honestly think that if someone else besides Zatch became king… I wouldn’t mind. Because neither would Zatch. All Zatch wants is a good person to be on the throne. His battle is never driven by ego, not once, not ever. He never thinks that it has to be him. His only thought is that the king must be kind. So, if Zatch wins, he will win because he has earned it. Zatch’s growth in the story is always super satisfying to see, and the fact that he is a child makes it all the more impactful and a more realistic narrative of learning about the world. I love the way this series approaches leadership, and I love the way Zatch and Kiyo approach leadership.

I could talk more about Zatch Bell.

I could talk about the different phases of the story, and how the flow of the narrative changes as the series goes on.

I could talk about the bone-chilling final villain, and how cool and strange the final arc is.

I could talk about how the last five volumes were never translated into English and what was translated was never reprinted and is legitimately difficult to find, so it’s morally permissible to read scanlations for free online.

I could also talk about how those free scanlations are available on mangadex.org and are of generally above-average quality.

I could talk about all the beloved characters, about the coolest fights and the sickest spells and the most heartwrenching losses and the dumbest jokes, and about my abiding hatred/love/hatred for Suzume…

But I think I’ve said enough.

You should read Zatch Bell.

It’s got real heart. It deserves your time.

Every time I read it, I love it more than I did the last time through.

It’s one of the greatest shonen series ever made.

I’ll finish this with an excerpt from the author’s note at the beginning of volume 1:

“This is a story about a kid who’s growing up, bit by bit.”