"How much do you think I've changed... How much do you think he's helped me? That's why it's my turn!"
Zatch Bell is one of the first mangas I've ever read. I used to love the anime even though the premise and the character designs were so strange and weird.
The idea is that there are a bunch of humans who need to fight with other humans in a pokemon, digimon, or Medabots-like style where they have a partner by their side that does all the battling while the human gives emotional support. Except here, the "pokemon" are replaced with little kids...
This is a very odd concept since the reason these types of stories usually have a human partner up with some sort of monster or robot is so that you don't feel that bad while watching them beating the hell out of each other... So having kids (very, very little kids no less) doing the fighting makes you go "Isn't that, like... Really violent?"
Little did I know as I kept watching the show that this was exactly the point of the story.
Something I really respect about Zatch Bell is that, unlike many series where characters just feel like pain sponges, wounds in here actually matter... Both physical and emotional.
Basically, every major conflict in the manga starts with the two leads, Zatch and Kyo, taking on the burden of someone's pain and trying their best to help them out.
The manga itself starts with these two taking on each other's pain. Kyo was a kid who was growing distant from his friends so Zatch tried to devise plans to help others see his good points so Kyo can make friends. Meanwhile, Zatch is struggling with memory loss so Kyo is working his big brain to solve the mystery of who Zatch is and where he came from, and as they keep trying to help each other they both start to bond and realize they need one another more than they realize.
As Kyo spends more time with Zatch he learns how to trust his emotions more, and as Zatch spends more time with Kyo he starts to mature and use his head more.
The more they try to help someone, the better people they each turn into, and they each act as a guide to the other on how to best help others.
Zatch Bell is a series where you really get the sense that friendship truly matters.
Any time a new character is introduced we quickly are told what their struggles in life were and what kind of emotional damage they are dealing with.
Something I tend to obsess with whenever I think about a series is how it deals with the victim's pain. There are times when someone's pain is just a tool to further the plot, or just an excuse to get the main character angry and motivated, or just to show how evil the bad guy of the arc is, and when that's dealt with, the victim is just forgotten and ignored.
But here, everyone's pain always feels like they matter. There is hardly an arc where Zatch and Kyo don't end up crying out after hearing someone's backstory and feeling frustrated for being unable to help. You feel like they are bonding with these people, you feel like they are understanding how much they are suffering, and you feel their desire to help them out.
In fact, the thing that triggers the big goal that motivates the two characters throughout the rest of the series is seeing a girl forced to fight into the tournament as well and seeing how much that was torturing her.
Again, these are all kids around the age of 6 to 12, and they are all battling with each other using these big demonic spells that tend to leave them bathed in their own blood by the time the fight stops, and one of the big plot points is that when they lose a fight they basically have to leave the show until the end.
When characters are suffering you feel that pain as well.
I like Zatch and Kyo because they're characters that best showcase the power of sympathy. Any time you see them fighting, or getting injured, or doing their best to come up with a plan to take down an enemy you always sense that they have someone's pain or possible pain motivating them.
My all-time favorite moment is when one of the villains is threatening to use a weapon called "Faudo" to destroy the island of Japan, and when they face against said villain and he starts his "bad guy" monologue all the heroes are thinking about is keeping all these innocents live safe.
It's so simple but so effective how this shows these two always put the pain of others before their own.
This is one of those series that makes you realize the importance of establishing connections between characters. It's not just about having one invincible main lead that deals with everything on his own, it's about showing why it's important to stand up and fight by showing the people they care about and why they care about them.
All those cliche lines like "friendship is power", "my friends are my power", "I fight for my friends", "there is something I must protect", and all that stuff, they all feel earned here.
I love Zatch and Kyo because they're the kind of heroes that really show the importance and power of caring about others!
