Shounen Konjiki No Gash Bell by Raiku Makoto

[kikiboudka]

Alright, i'm not 100% sure it's the place to start this topic, but here is our gash bell topic. as you may know the manga is over in japan, and we are doing our best to give you HQness of this serie as fast as possible.

Today, we are releasing v20, which makes 20 volumes scanlated in around 3 years !

If you got questions or just want to thank, that's the topic ^^.

http://www.n-u-l-l.net

 

[someone2040]

Re: Konjiki No Gash Bell [Null]

Gash Bell is awesome. Even though it's pretty much about kids beating each other senseless (ok, not all of the demons are little kids), the style is just... hilarious! I love it when characters get angry, as the faces they make are just so amusing. I always want more after each volume comes out

Props to Null for scanslating it this long (3 years, wow! now that's some dedication).

 

[MattC302]

I'm curious to know your issues to see if they are the same as mine
I've found a Gash bell thread, sadly almost empty. I guess that's the unfair law of completed works, however good they are.

To be honest, I only really have 2 main issues with this series, but those two issues bothered me throughout my entire reading experience. My biggest issue was the emotional scenes not hitting their mark with me. A sure way for me to love a manga is for it to tug at my heartstrings, and I think this manga attempted to do that a lot, but it just never got me. And that really annoyed me. There are tons of scenes that I could tell where suppose to be emotional. Tons of crying scenes. I wanted to feel these emotions and cry along with the characters, but it just never happened.

My other issue is the fighting. There is just SOOOOO much fighting. Too much in my opinion. And for the first 9 volumes, the fights are just random and repetitive, like glorified Pokemon battles. There wasn't even a real story arc until around volume 10. So yeah, for me, the fights were often tedious to read through. For a series with so many fights, only a few of them stood out as awesome clashes.

On the other side of things, I think this manga may be one of the funniest I have ever read, and that is saying something since this manga isn't primarily a comedy(makes me wish Makoto Raiku would try to do a pure, gag manga after Doubutsu no Kuni). A lot of the comedy is just juvenile slapstick and funny faces, but I can't deny that it had me laughing out loud very, very frequently. Though the comedy did kind of go by the way side in the later, more serious arc.

 

[k-dom]

For your first point, I can't really say much. To my shame (as a guy), it's quite easy to make me cry. I must say that

Spoiler

won lei death

is one of my favorite in a shonen.
Concerning the beginning, I must said when I started I would never have guessed I would like it this much. It's weird because Biscuit hammer which seems to be the same type of scenario never seduced me and I stop reading it while Zatch Bell succeeded. Also, the story is full of the shonen tropes, they are quite well made, Raiku Makoto is a good writer on this aspect.
As for your third point you are completely right. Even I fell into the charm of this stupid Victoreem.
I just have a bemol concerning the plot which is that I didn't like that Gash was of a royal family, it didn't fit with the fact that the demon king is chosen from the tournament, but overall it was a very good surprise.

I would love to try his current work, unfortunately it is not translated in French and there is only the first scanlated volume.

 

[MattC302]

For your first point, I can't really say much. To my shame (as a guy), it's quite easy to make me cry.

Me too. That's why I was so peeved that with all the emotional scenes and crying in Gash Bell, none of them struck a cord with me. I wanted so bad to share these feelings with the characters, but it never happened.

I would love to try his current work, unfortunately it is not translated in French and there is only the first scanlated volume.

I have the first 5 volumes of Doubutsu no Kuni(called Animal Land in America), and I already like it better than Gash Bell. It really is too bad that there is no dedicated Edited Manga for it because I think it is a majorly overlooked manga.

 

[thatguy3331]

Ah gash bell, my first manga series and one of my favorites I remember reading this as I watched the anime and I had a blast the whole time.

As for the begining, yes there are a bunch of fights that are pretty much glorified pokemon battles but to be honest I kind of liked it for that. It WAS a competition to become king so I didn't really mind that the begining was a bunch of random battles, hell I really don't blame ANY story for not playing any heavy handed story arc cards from the get go. It always seemed more realisitic and logical to me to mess around with the basics a bit and THEN head into the story arcs. Besides one thing I did like about the battles was that there was a sense of startegy used in some and not all of them ended with some random powerup, some did mind you but I didn't even have an issue with how they got new spells because I pretty much figured from the begining the books ran on

Spoiler

Emotional power

as for some of the other arcs afterwards:

Spoiler

The 1000 year mamodo arc was fairly cool, especially when ponygon/umagon finally got his book owner and there were some cool fights but I absolutly LOVE the 3rd and 4th arcs. Not only did we have a bunch of cool mamodo but the foudo and curse ideas were awesome, and the battles inside foudo were even MORE awesome, not to mention Zeno appearing. Kiyomaro's death and coming back was also used quite well here IMO. Then we have the final arc... my god where do I begin. After all the battles both blood and tear shed this was probably one of the most satisfying endings to a sereis I've ever seen. Hell alot of series can be dark, epic and contraversial but not every one of them end well.

I also agree that I LOVE the humor and wierd faces here. As I went further into anime I hardly found any manga artist that could match the same feel Raiku- sensei's commedic faces had.

I'm also enjoying animal land (owning volumes 2-5) I can't say I like this more than Gash but I can very well tell this is Raiku Makoto's work and I'm loving how he set up the world there.