ゼロの使い魔公式アンソロジーコミック トリステインの章

Zero No Tsukaima #5

by Noboru Yamaguchi

Genres: Manga, Light Novel, Fantasy, Fiction

Comic

First published July 25, 2005

Reviews

[Cecille · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Familiar of Zero series is not one of class or refinement. After all, the books follow an everyman Japanese high school student who's teleported into a fantasy world and, mostly through convenient happenstance and sometimes through sheer dumb luck, finds himself burdened by awesome powers and the uncanny ability to make nearly the entire female cast fall madly in love with him. But, as a fan of trashy stories like this, the series has proven to be very entertaining and pretty funny when it counts.

I can't say the same about this installment, though. It lacks the dramatic and occasionally cool edge of the previous volumes, trading it in for tired "will they or won't they?" gags between the main couple, while also throwing in a nice dollop of homophobia from the main character for flavor. We do get a bit more backstory for some of the more interesting side-characters, but for the most part this is 2/3rds a slice-of-life "summer vacation" side story with stale gags, with a middling last third that tries to - but doesn't quite - hit the suspense highs of the last three books. Its a mix that makes the less savory (but fully expected of this genre) bits present in the rest of the series - especially the sexism and gender stereotyping - harder to overlook.