[#026] I spent the past few weeks (on and off) reading my first manga, which is Volumes 1-3 of Hitoshi Ariga's comic world of Mega Man. These collections were originally released in Japan in 2003, but Udon Entertainment re-released English-translated versions in 2010.

As I previously stated, this was my very first venture into manga. I had a hell of a time adjusting to reading in reverse order. You have to hold the spine of the book on the right side and start at what is normally the last page, flipping to the left as you progress. That's the easy part. In manga, you have to start at the top right of the page and make your way to the bottom left. While usually manageable to follow, some pages had panel layouts that had me get lost, especially the ones that were a partial two-page spread. You eventually get the hang of it and it becomes second nature. By Volume 3, I was absorbing the content at my normal pace.

One thing I constantly found hilarious were the "action words". In typical (American?) comics, you get "Wham!" "Bam!", "Oof!", "Slam!", and the like. They're basically sound effects, right? Well, in the world of Hitoshi Ariga's manga, everything and anything is an "action word". Things like "Gets Up", "Glare", "Turn", "Surprise", "Run run run", "Angry", etc. These words are typically in all-caps and run down the side of a character. At the time of this writing, I'm unsure if all manga features this or if that is something only Mr. Hitoshi does as part of his style.

Technical crap aside, let's get to my summary/review.

MEGAMIX: VOLUME 1

This book includes three main stories and also features an interview between Hitoshi Ariga (the manga artist) and Keiji Inafune (the creator of Mega Man and project leader on every Mega Man game ever). The interview is actually spliced into three parts, so you have to buy all three volumes of Megamix in order to read the whole thing.

The first story is titled The Birth of Mega Man, which is the introduction story based on Mega Man 1. Dr Light creates Rock and his little sister Roll, then Dr. Light's six other construction robots go on a rampage and Rock demands to be transformed into a combat robot to help stop his brothers. The six (Ice/Fire/Elec/Cut/Guts/Bomb) were all implanted with Dr. Wily's "Evil Chip". In the end, the chips are discovered/removed and the six return to being their normal selves. Oh and there's a brief cameo from the MM2 Robot Masters, but they're all wearing hooded robes so you just see bits of their faces.

The second story, R Destruction Order, is based upon the events of Mega Man 2 and even includes an appearance of the Mecha Dragon and Item-2. Dr. Wily has 13 Skull Satellites that he wants to launch into space to destroy the planet or something. Quick Man appears to be stronger than the titular hero. Mega Man is almost destroyed until Flash Man interferes because he wants the kill shot. This is probably the only story where Dr. Wily's Robot Masters pose any real threat, as future stories depict them as allies, comic relief, or both. Also, from this point forward, the stories do not match the events of the video games.

The third and final story of Volume 1 is called Metal Heart, which centers around Mega Man and the Robot Masters of Mega Man 3 trying to stop Yellow Devil MK-II (also from MM3) from wreaking havoc on the city. The predictable plot "twist" was negated by the conclusion, which played out as a surprise almost-tearjerker. This was my favorite of the three stories in this volume, although the second story is great too because it has a much more serious tone. MM3 is my all-time favorite MM game, so maybe the inclusion of the MM3 Robot Masters (Spark/Snake/Needle/Shadow/Gemini/Magnet/Top/Hard) plays a part in my opinion. One thing I thought was an odd character design was that Shadow Man always has one of his eyes closed with no explanation. I thought maybe he was damaged, or that it was just some Japanese manga thing. Both of these guesses are wrong, but the correct answer isn't revealed until Volume 3.

At the conclusion of the actual comics are Character Files, which is present in all three volumes. Each page is dedicated to two characters. Always starting off with Rock, then going into the Robot Masters and other minor characters who make appearances. The character files in this volume covers Dr Light, Rock, Mega Man, Roll, Robot Masters from Mega Man 1 through Mega Man 3, Mecha Dragon, Yellow Devil, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple.

After the Character Files is the first 33.333% of the Interview. I forget which chunk of the interview it is (it may be in Volume 2 or Volume 3), but there's a part where Keiji Inafune explains that he designed the sword-wielding character Zero to be Mega Man X. However, Capcom thought he was too different from his NES counterpart and told Mr. Inafune that they wanted to go with the "blue guy" that his associate designed. Thus the reason why the Mega Man Zero series on GBA was born. MMZ was pretty much how MMX would have played out without Capcom's control over Mr. Inafune.

This is a solid volume, but only second-best of the three.

MEGAMIX: VOLUME 2

Following suit, this volume contains three main stories, more character files, the middle chunk of the interview between the manga artist and the creator of Mega Man, but then also includes some bonus comics centered around the Mega Man's Soccer SNES title plus the first two collections of shorts called Mega Man Maniax.

The first story is called Grim Reaper of Destruction, and centers around the cast of Mega Man 4, mostly of Skull Man, who is the main antagonist. The story takes place in the middle of a blizzard. Wily takes Cossack hostage, meanwhile Kalinka and Roll are stuck in a cave. Kalinka almost freezes to death but Roll overloads her core circuit to warm her (and risking permanent damage to herself). Skull Man wants to kill everyone because unlike his 7 brothers, he was created as a combat robot and was locked away by his own creator Dr. Cossack. The somewhat-sappy story ends with Skull Man dying and being laid to rest in a capsule filled with floral arrangements in the last panel, while everyone stands around him with tears in their eyes. As stupid as this story sounds, it has some great moments and I'm not really doing it justice. The theme of this story is family, and the way it plays out works. It's definitely the best story of Volume 2.

Warrior's Day Off is the second story, which uses the characters from Mega Man 5 and puts them all in an amusement park. Rock, Roll, and the six from MM1 have the day off from whatever they normally do and they decide to go ride some rides and stuff. What they don't know is that the MM5 Robot Masters are employees working the various rides and booths. Bass (and his pet Treble) shows up just to be himself; an asshole. He takes down the MM1 guys, but the MM5 guys are mad that that Bass is putting their amusement park, their jobs, and their paychecks in jeopardy. The eight of them team up and almost take him down, but Proto Man shows up out of nowhere to deliver the final blow that forces Bass to retreat. This was the least serious/most comical story in any of the three volumes.

The third and final main story in Volume 2 is Power Battle, which is pretty much Bass VS Mega Man. Bass had to kidnap Roll in order to get Mega Man to fight him, because Bass has an ego to feed and wants to put Mega Man down to prove that he is the strongest robot ever. Proto Man comes back for this one and saves Mega Man's ass once, but let's him get pummeled in Round 2. ...I don't remember much more than that... At least with the previous (amusement park) story, I remember laughing at how goofy it was. I mean, one of them was wearing a freaken apron and cooking! That is memorable!

Once the three main stories end, there are some more Character Files that once again start with Rock, then go into the characters from MM4, MM5, and others like Bass/Treble.

After the character files, you're greeted with the first two Mega Man Maniax collections, which are mostly page-long comical shorts. These weren't in Volume 1 at all, and there are three more in the third volume. There's a strip about Auto, Dr. Light's helper robot, building his own Robot Masters. These robots were actual submissions from fans. The author Hitoshi Ariga chose one idea from the letters that poured in and he would feature that idea in the strip. Another strip featuring Mr. Hitoshi himself in talk-show-host format and he would "interview" Mega Man, Roll, Proto Man, and Dr Cossack. Whenever Mr. Hitoshi drew himself, he would give himself spirals for eyes. Very interesting, Anyway, there are two other strip-types to mention. One followed a justice-seeking robot named Duo, who would punch the crap out whoever he was talking to because they did something wrong (in his eyes). The last panel would always warn kids that Duo may come after them if they aren't being good. Oh and then the other strip (my favorite of the four) is centered around Dr. Wily explaining one of his many minor robots that could be found in a Robot Master's stage. The strip would usually end in said robot attacking him in some way. The best one was in Volume 3 though. I'll get to that later...

After the three main stories, the character files, and the two collections of Mega Man Maniax, we're still not done with Volume 2 of Megamix! The final section is Mega Man's Soccer, which is a bunch of page-long or 3-panel strips that somewhat relate to each other. Some of them were dumb, but there were also a few gems in the mix. A couple of them had me cracking up! Oh and Enker (one of the Mega Man Killers) is the disgruntled referee who keeps yelling at everyone because they're not playing soccer correctly!

Even though this Volume is packed with content, it's actually the weakest of the three which can only mean...

MEGAMIX: VOLUME 3

The third and final volume of Megamix is the best one. It features only one main story, and it is the best story found in Megamix. It's an epic tale that spans 150+ pages, which is roughly 3x longer than any of the previous stories.

Before I get started, I want to share that one of my all-time favorite Mega Man characters is a little guy named Quint. He made his appearance as the penultimate boss in Mega Man II on the classic Game Boy. His official story is that he is actually Mega Man from the future who was captured by Dr. Wily, brainwashed, and then sent back in time to destroy himself. I love Quint, I love stuff that revolves around clones and time travel, and I love The Strongest Enemy In History, also known as The Strongest Enemy To Date. Although Quint is not in this story, it's still a tale about Mega Man VS Mega Man.

The beginning somewhat follows the storyline of Mega Man 6 and also centers around the MM6 Robot Masters. Mega Man goes to stop Mr. X (who we all know is Dr Wily, no surprise there). Mega Man quickly has Dr Wily at his mercy, but the Blue Bomber blasts his head into pieces anyway, exploiting the fact that this Dr. Wily was actually just a robot copy (a hint of things to come).

Do you remember Ring Man from MM4? Well, now he's on the police force and shows up at Dr. Light's house to arrest him because Mega Man is wreaking havoc on the city. A brief news clip on the tv shown by news anchor Charlie (from Street Fighter!!) proves that Ring Man is telling the truth, so Dr. Light, Roll, and Auto end up in the slammer (in separate cells), but Roll eventually busts out of jail (with a little help from Ring Man). Meanwhile, all the Robot Masters realize that Mega Man has really lost his mind because he almost completely mutilated Yamato Man beyond repair.

Then, one of the best scenes in any comic happens. It's a quiet moonlight night and Rock is taking a stroll. He hears a whistle and looks up, he sees Proto Man in his regular-clothes disguise. He's standing on another rooftop, one street away. They stare each other down momentarily. Then Rock breaks the silence and asks, "Do you think you can do it?" Then the grimace comes. "Do you really think you can stop me?" Then you turn the page and there's a two-page spread of Mega Man and Proto Man in their battle armor. About. To. F--k. Shit. Up.

I want these panels, in color, and in non-reverse order, on a poster. Someone please make this happen for me... (I'm actually considering buying another Volume 3 so that I can take the pages out to make that poster myself)

It was explained that the clone of Mega Man has all of the real Mega Man's memories, so at some parts in the story it's not clear which Mega Man is which Mega Man. The fact that this story confused me at parts is awesome. It reminds me of when I first watched Donnie Darko (a film about time travel). I had to watch it a second time to get it completely.

Back to the story. I don't want to spoil everything, so I'll fast forward a bit. During the Mega Man VS Mega Man battle, the two trade shots, and even use other Robot Masters' weapons on each other. At some point, the duplicate Mega Man starts to overheat, and bits of his armor flake off which unveils Dr. Wily's trademark "W" underneath. It is then that the duplicate realizes that he is not the real Mega Man. This pisses him off and makes him want to kill the real Mega Man so that he can be the only Mega Man. Instead, Roll accidentally gets blown away and is then in critical state under the care of Dr. Cossack.

Bass shows up, because well let's face it, he's a huge asshole. He starts fighting the clone thinking it's the real Mega Man, but gets butt-hurt when he finds out he's only fighting the clone as Mega Man comes to defend him from Bass.

In a last-ditch effort, the clone tackles Bass upward and they soar into the sky. When the clone senses that everyone on the ground is at a safe distance, he detonates himself, taking Bass out with him.

There's some sappy pre-epilogue stuff regarding how in his last moments, the Mega Man clone was the real Mega Man for saving everyone's lives. And then one of the characters says something about Mega Man's eyes, and that the clones' eyes were different. After flipping back, sure enough their eyes were drawn different throughout the story and I never noticed. Oh right, and the thing about Shadow Man's eye. It was revealed that one of his eyes is a camera that feeds to monitors in Dr. Wily's lab, essentially making Shadow Man a walking spycam. He keeps that eye closed whenever he doesn't want Dr. Wily to see something. Some loyal henchman he is. Ha!

Once the story ends, there is another batch of Character Files which are mostly of MM6 Robot Masters, then comes Mega Man Maniax collections 3 through 5. There's one in particular that had me in tears. Dr. Wily's Animal Kingdom Episode 3 shows the evil Doc explaining the giant whale from Dive Man's stage in Mega Man 4, that the whale is a mammal. Dr. Wily then points out the whale's nipples. Then Dive Man swims by and says that those are bolts (which they are). The whale then fires torpedoes and Wily tries explaining those too but gets blown away instead.

Maniax is then followed by three one-shots and a fourth one-page comic called Meow, centering around Tango and Beat. One of the other comics follows the Genesis Unit (Buster Rod G / Mega Water S / Hyper Storm H) on the hunt for Mega Man. After being lost for the longest time, they finally find him and are so happy that they forget they were supposed to destroy him. Upon returning to Dr. Wily, they say with pride that they met Mega Man, and Dr. Wily doesn't even recognize them as they've been gone so long. That one was funny. There's even a full-page board game based on this comic that you can play, but I wouldn't dare rip said page out of my book!

As an expansion to Character Files, there's several pages dedicated to a slew of non-Robot-Master enemy robots that appear throughout the NES games. They are presented as Dr. Wily's Robots 101. A few of the pages even go through the evolution of characters like the Metalls and the Joes. Later pages feature mini-bosses, Wily Castle stage bosses, and ending with the 3 Mega Man Killers (and Quint).

As stated at the start of my Volume 3 section, this is the best of the three books.

So let me wrap this up, as this is probably the longest blog post I ever have or ever will make. You get a lot for your money at $12.95 USD per book. I got mine from Amazon Prime. Mega Man Megamix Volumes 1 through 3 is a solid entry into manga, especially if you're a Mega Man fan like me.

And I am nowhere near done reading manga.

COMING SOON:

MEGA MAN MANGA II: GIGAMIX