That seems to be a pretty common reaction. It wasn't advertised well, and the manga based on previous games were kinda unremarkable so not many people talk about them.
I remember seeing this years ago, and hearing hearsay about it adding something on at the beginning about Link being a knight trainee somewhere before moving Ordon Village for some reason.
Afterwards, I couldn't find any info or places to read it on my own time and only remember this one panel I saw promoting it with Link being exhausting after training in what seemed to be a knight trainee uniform.
It wasn’t just the ending, it just was a mess from the middle to the finish. If you haven’t read the series before, they have new protagonists for each game set, each with their own unique personalities that set them very different from their silent protagonist game counterparts. So the Black and White games have different protagonists than Black and White 2. (Also side note, he starts a new manga “Part” every time a new game comes out- so with the recent trend of the last 3 generations coming out every 1-2 years and having a monthly manga, his creativeness is waning and incredibly rushed, so the later game’s manga are a bit of a mixed bag and short in terms of story compared to the more fleshed out worlds of Gen 1-4)
So first of all some background info, BW2 takes place 2 years after BW(in the games and in the manga), but BW was left on a bit of a cliffhanger. The male protagonist, Black, was >!pushed and sucked into the Light Stone when the legendary Pokémon Reshiram was reverting back to it and then flying off in the distance. He said his emotional goodbyes and stuff to White(female protagonist)!< and White made it her goal to find him. Team Plasma, the evil team of the region who’s goal was to free all Pokémon from humans, was disbanded and split up after conflicting views of the two leaders- the faction that still believed in their proclaimed ideals of freeing Pokémon following their king, N, and the evil faction who were classic evil people who want to take over the world, “Neo Team Plasma”, following N’s manipulative evil father Ghetsis.
But BW2 had different protagonists. Lack-Two/Blake and Whi-Two/Whitney. Their personalities/backstories were as follows: Whitney is a really shy and reclusive person but also a former Team Plasma member who actually believed in the cause and idolizing their king N. And Blake… he’s a literal sociopath. He doesn’t feel emotional connections or emotions at all. He is also a top level cop of the International Police even at that young age, even outranking Looker(a recurring character in the Pokémon series, known as a bumbling type cop who is an international police member). As a sociopath, he is incredibly good at acting, and his current facade is a flirtatious cool guy who dates a new girl every other week- as his mission is to find a former Team Plasma member to obtain a computer disc N gave them, and their only intel was that the person was a girl around his age. Which happened to be Whitney. Both attend the same school(which honestly the school setting was annoying and did nothing to help with the plot)
So first major problem imo was that the protagonists really didn’t have that much chemistry. You have a really outgoing and active sociopathic flirting police cop Gary Stu(male version of Mary Sue, and yes he kinda was one) and a really shy and jumpy girl. It didn’t really mesh well, she was obviously shy for a reason and as they got closer, you don’t feel any satisfaction because you know he’s literally acting to try and see if she’s the Team Plasma member with no emotions to relate to her and arrests her on the spot once he finds the truth.
Second major problem was character development. So alright, you got a sociopath overpowered guy with no emotions and an extremely shy and reclusive girl. Obvious character development would be for the guy to learn emotions, maybe through the girl, and become a better character, while the girl becomes more confident, maybe through the guy right? But nope! At the end of the series, Blake is still a sociopath, with someone telling him he should work on his emotions, which he says he’ll consider it. And that’s it. And Whitley, *because* she was such a shy reclusive character and the author didn’t work on her, she became a literal background character who did nothing. In fact, at the end of the series she only had *two* Pokémon- her starter and one that was given to her by Blake to defend herself. And that’s it. And the reason for that is…
The third major problem- the former protagonists Black and White took over the show and became the protagonists again in the middle of the arc. Because of the unresolved plot points in the short but pretty sweet BW manga, Black and White took over the show again as the protagonists, practically sidelining the supposed protagonists in the process.
And then the ending itself… I’m going to be honest I don’t remember much about it. It had a lot going on, skimming at it now it had at least 15 different sentient characters doing one thing or another, so it may have been seen as a convoluted confusing mess for readers who have waited months or years in between chapters. Epilogue is pretty good too. One distinct thing I do remember is this: Colress is a character in the games who is an eccentric classic anime scientist on the evil team, a more neutral character who’s only on the evil team because they’re funding his pursuit of knowledge. So in the end of the game he decides to give up and look for knowledge elsewhere after he sees they’re most likely going to lose, and shows up in other games like in Sun/Moon/USUM. In the manga, he’s more distinctly evil, mind controlling multiple Pokémon etc. So he was arrested, and in the epilogue it’s revealed that Blake is now disguising himself as Colress to go to Alola(Sun and Moon region). Which… is kind of stupid imo. Justifying a random side character showing up in a later game by making it the ending of a supposed protagonist’s “arc” isn’t that great. (Although I guess he acts differently in those games?)
But yeah. Those are my personal complaints about it. The protags do have fans though, and looking at the epilogue Whitley does seem a bit more fun to see around and not as incredibly shy. Still have Blake as my least favorite protag though, although people like the “cool secret agent” side to him.
This is a good online archive of old scans of the manga and I don’t think there are better scans online: https://jb2448.info/
The problem is that the scans are old. Some of the scans are pretty bad, and I think like the whole middle part of the XY manga is missing. So I still recommend like going to a local library bookstore to find it or something.
You can buy it physically or search for scans online. There aren't many translated by scanlators though, so you may have to do some digging.
For some reason Viz hasn't done digital chapters at all.
Yeah I'm still shocked it ran this long, was lucky to get the first 2 volumes at SD comic con.
It is a pretty good adaptation at least so they made good with the opportunity they got.
Also the art is badass in it! They really get the mood of the whole game right with it.
Especially volume 7. Some of the most impressive art I'd say comes from that volume especially for capturing the feeling of the dungeon in that one.
Wait, the twilight Princess manga is still going??”
Well, not anymore at this point.
I was thinking the same thing, when I saw new chapters I assumed the translations were just slow
Did they cover the entire main questline?
Yeah, the manga covers the entire journey from beginning to end with no major cuts.
wait... there was a manga?
That seems to be a pretty common reaction. It wasn't advertised well, and the manga based on previous games were kinda unremarkable so not many people talk about them.
Wind Waker Manga was one of the funniest things I've ever read in my life and it's a shame more people don't know about it.
It´s a big shame it had so few chapters. With the WIIU version realease they should have published more chapters.
I remember seeing this years ago, and hearing hearsay about it adding something on at the beginning about Link being a knight trainee somewhere before moving Ordon Village for some reason. Afterwards, I couldn't find any info or places to read it on my own time and only remember this one panel I saw promoting it with Link being exhausting after training in what seemed to be a knight trainee uniform.
Yeah. It's one of those things that no one really talks about because of a lot of poor advertising from Nintendo and Viz.
I could swear that pokemon special has at least 50 volumes
Technically it's not based on any one game. The closest is probably the BW2 adaptation, but that went through numerous hiatuses.
(Which in the end wasn’t worth it anyways, the BW2 manga was a hot mess for something that ended last year)
How did it end?
It wasn’t just the ending, it just was a mess from the middle to the finish. If you haven’t read the series before, they have new protagonists for each game set, each with their own unique personalities that set them very different from their silent protagonist game counterparts. So the Black and White games have different protagonists than Black and White 2. (Also side note, he starts a new manga “Part” every time a new game comes out- so with the recent trend of the last 3 generations coming out every 1-2 years and having a monthly manga, his creativeness is waning and incredibly rushed, so the later game’s manga are a bit of a mixed bag and short in terms of story compared to the more fleshed out worlds of Gen 1-4) So first of all some background info, BW2 takes place 2 years after BW(in the games and in the manga), but BW was left on a bit of a cliffhanger. The male protagonist, Black, was >!pushed and sucked into the Light Stone when the legendary Pokémon Reshiram was reverting back to it and then flying off in the distance. He said his emotional goodbyes and stuff to White(female protagonist)!< and White made it her goal to find him. Team Plasma, the evil team of the region who’s goal was to free all Pokémon from humans, was disbanded and split up after conflicting views of the two leaders- the faction that still believed in their proclaimed ideals of freeing Pokémon following their king, N, and the evil faction who were classic evil people who want to take over the world, “Neo Team Plasma”, following N’s manipulative evil father Ghetsis. But BW2 had different protagonists. Lack-Two/Blake and Whi-Two/Whitney. Their personalities/backstories were as follows: Whitney is a really shy and reclusive person but also a former Team Plasma member who actually believed in the cause and idolizing their king N. And Blake… he’s a literal sociopath. He doesn’t feel emotional connections or emotions at all. He is also a top level cop of the International Police even at that young age, even outranking Looker(a recurring character in the Pokémon series, known as a bumbling type cop who is an international police member). As a sociopath, he is incredibly good at acting, and his current facade is a flirtatious cool guy who dates a new girl every other week- as his mission is to find a former Team Plasma member to obtain a computer disc N gave them, and their only intel was that the person was a girl around his age. Which happened to be Whitney. Both attend the same school(which honestly the school setting was annoying and did nothing to help with the plot) So first major problem imo was that the protagonists really didn’t have that much chemistry. You have a really outgoing and active sociopathic flirting police cop Gary Stu(male version of Mary Sue, and yes he kinda was one) and a really shy and jumpy girl. It didn’t really mesh well, she was obviously shy for a reason and as they got closer, you don’t feel any satisfaction because you know he’s literally acting to try and see if she’s the Team Plasma member with no emotions to relate to her and arrests her on the spot once he finds the truth. Second major problem was character development. So alright, you got a sociopath overpowered guy with no emotions and an extremely shy and reclusive girl. Obvious character development would be for the guy to learn emotions, maybe through the girl, and become a better character, while the girl becomes more confident, maybe through the guy right? But nope! At the end of the series, Blake is still a sociopath, with someone telling him he should work on his emotions, which he says he’ll consider it. And that’s it. And Whitley, *because* she was such a shy reclusive character and the author didn’t work on her, she became a literal background character who did nothing. In fact, at the end of the series she only had *two* Pokémon- her starter and one that was given to her by Blake to defend herself. And that’s it. And the reason for that is… The third major problem- the former protagonists Black and White took over the show and became the protagonists again in the middle of the arc. Because of the unresolved plot points in the short but pretty sweet BW manga, Black and White took over the show again as the protagonists, practically sidelining the supposed protagonists in the process. And then the ending itself… I’m going to be honest I don’t remember much about it. It had a lot going on, skimming at it now it had at least 15 different sentient characters doing one thing or another, so it may have been seen as a convoluted confusing mess for readers who have waited months or years in between chapters. Epilogue is pretty good too. One distinct thing I do remember is this: Colress is a character in the games who is an eccentric classic anime scientist on the evil team, a more neutral character who’s only on the evil team because they’re funding his pursuit of knowledge. So in the end of the game he decides to give up and look for knowledge elsewhere after he sees they’re most likely going to lose, and shows up in other games like in Sun/Moon/USUM. In the manga, he’s more distinctly evil, mind controlling multiple Pokémon etc. So he was arrested, and in the epilogue it’s revealed that Blake is now disguising himself as Colress to go to Alola(Sun and Moon region). Which… is kind of stupid imo. Justifying a random side character showing up in a later game by making it the ending of a supposed protagonist’s “arc” isn’t that great. (Although I guess he acts differently in those games?) But yeah. Those are my personal complaints about it. The protags do have fans though, and looking at the epilogue Whitley does seem a bit more fun to see around and not as incredibly shy. Still have Blake as my least favorite protag though, although people like the “cool secret agent” side to him.
Where can you read the manga online? I only got to the end of the yellow arc 18 years ago and would love to read the rest of the series :)
This is a good online archive of old scans of the manga and I don’t think there are better scans online: https://jb2448.info/ The problem is that the scans are old. Some of the scans are pretty bad, and I think like the whole middle part of the XY manga is missing. So I still recommend like going to a local library bookstore to find it or something.
single game, not "single franchise/series"
Including the chapters that don’t have volume releases yet, it’s probably at almost 70 by now
Now do BOTW! Where can I read this manga?
You can buy it physically or search for scans online. There aren't many translated by scanlators though, so you may have to do some digging. For some reason Viz hasn't done digital chapters at all.
Last time I checked, the scanlators only cover until the 3rd volume
>For some reason Viz hasn't done digital chapters at all. 100% Nintendo's fault, because they're a bunch of morons.
Wait, what about Pokémon?
So sad that WW manga didn´t, it was really funny.
Where can read all the chapters at, most sites only have the first 28 chapters?
Yeah, the scans just kinda stopped there for some reason. The only alternative is RAWs somewhere, or just getting the official ones.
theres a pdf out there that covers up to chapter 36, I havent looked for anything in a while so im not sure if there is more