On the Paper Trail: Mega Man MegaMix Vol. 1

Welcome back to the trail partners and for this installment we are going to talk about Manga. You know Manga, its the Japanese comic Book where you need to read it backwards in order to read it properly. All kidding aside I have nothing wrong with manga, except that the majority of them are serialized so much that to do a proper review requires me to take out a loan to afford it all. So from the jump I am only talking about Volume 1 of mangas unless otherwise specified.

Now for Mega Man MegaMix it is a series created by Hitoshi Argiga and published by Udon. Udon has been known for taking Capcom licensed mangas and treating them with respect. Simply holding the art to the original form, leaving more then enough translation notes, and keeping everything as close to the original as possible. In short, this is a good publisher if these books are up your alley.

Now the book is actually comprised of three unique stories using the various characters from Mega Man 1,2 and 3 to great effect. The first story covers Mega Man 1 where Dr. Wily takes over the robots created by Dr. Light (Right if you are from Japan) and attempts to take over the world. Rock, a service robot demands to become a combat robot to save the humans and Light reluctantly does so. By happenstance Rock discovers the powers of coping abilities and uses them to defeat the various foes and defeats Wily before a cunning escape.

Story two has a more terrorist plot involved as Wily's own creations are used to launch giant skull satellites into orbit to destroy the world and have robot reign supreme. I won't spoil the ending of this one but needless to say Item 2 makes a great cameo in this story.

Story three has Wily recreating Yellow Devil from the original Mega Man but this time Wily's robots are working with Mega Man trying to stop Yellow Devil from causing more harm then good. The ending is bittersweet and reminds you that not all stories have to be used in cannon in order to be effective.

The art and attention to detail is amazing, various minor characters are used to great effect on being general goons and the action fits with the series itself. All the robot masters act appropriately and designed authentically to the various chibi incarnations that you have seen. The ending of the stories do include various character profiles to give you more information on each robot master that was presented in the story and a humorous message from the author detailing some changes he made to the story to make it work better.

All in all if you are a fan of the original Mega Man games give this a look through, currently there are three volumes available with a GigaMix being rumored as well.