ROBOTxLASERBEAM

From the author of KnB, it not surprising to see that this manga shares many similarities to that series. From the crazy powers to the awkward yet skillful main character, Robot x Laserbeam doesn't really give itself the chance to deviate itself enough from that series' fundamentals to really come into its own (I'll explain later). In KnB at least, the main character was awkward to really build that he had no presence as a basketball player which is why he was so strong. For RxL, the main character being so aloof was no more than a cliche of the awkward genius as well as to serve as a convenient way to explain the rules of golf to the readers. I liked the best friend character, though he was just kind of your typical straight-man to the absurdness of the protagonist and the other side characters. This series sharing similarities to KnB isn't really that much of a problem because I think that it took a lot of good things from it, but since the series had to be cut so short the possibilities of how different of a series it could have been were cut short.

I'll start with the first 30 chapters of the manga, which I thought were a pretty good hook - not only to sell me that golf is cool to look at in the manga, but also that it was unique enough for me to read in the first place. Its uniqueness kind of reminded me of Baby Steps a little, but I digress. The bluntness of the main character made it convenient to put him in troubling situations and entice the reader, which I think the series did a lot of in the first 30 chapters. Like when he confronted the bully golfers and subsequently schooled them, to when he played against Youzan, it really made me warm up to the character. From there it was kind of a snowball effect, the author had set himself up with a series of challenges that the protagonist had to face whilst also making it feel like a climb from the bottom despite the main character being a golf prodigy. The whole arc with Robo having to gain the respect of the club was pretty good, as well as the practice tournament right after showing the skills of all the regulars. And despite having the chance to really develop upon those school club kind of fundamentals, the manga just skips 3 years into the future. Considering that this manga was run in Shounen Jump I guess the author wanted to take a risk, but I really think that it was a mistake. I barely go to know the cast of characters that the manga kept teasing. Sure we got a look into their personalities a little bit, but just barely enough to make them enticing. And once the time skip happened that all kind of got thrown away. It was nice to see that the best friend had become the caddy of Robo's professional golfing career, but I feel like that would have been such a rewarding experience to live through if I had gone on the journey with them through the high school club life. That is, if the series would have lasted through that.

I feel like this series would have benefited through some training arcs and club bonding to see Robo's journey from being a subpar golfer despite having an incredible swing to becoming the professional player we see flash-forwarded to at the end of the series. Maybe the author was pressured by some middling ranks in the competitive Shounen ladder and felt like he had to make that move to survive. And it's a shame because there was some cool ideas, like the different types of golfers - and despite how lame that sounds this series kind of made those '7 Wonders of Golf' sound really cool.

I guess to continue, the series kind of went a bit haywire in the ending 30 chapters. It kind of just assumed that the readers cared enough about the main character for any of his professional career to matter despite Robo not REALLY having enough to carry him through - like, not even a backstory or really built up motivations. Sure, Youzan was a really mirrored rival of Robo's but that didn't really give Robo enough on his own to get through everything. At least the manga got to end on kind of a cohesive note.