Robotics;Notes Volume 3

Robotics; Notes #4-6

by 5pb., Keiji Asakawa (Artist)

The members of the Robotics Research Club are working hard to ready Gunbuild-1 for the Expo. As the stage of the final battle approaches, will the club survive… or be disbanded forever? The epic science adventure concludes!

356 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2024

Reviews

[Othy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot of this manga is a mess. There are a bunch of time jumps with almost no explanation, shifts in scenes that aren't signaled or make sense, and wacky character development. And was it all a trick? Why did I puzzle through those reports? This is a manga with a lot of good ideas but with misfired execution all the way down. But it was like this from the beginning, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Riley Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, while the Robotics;Notes manga adapts a variety of storylines and moments in an inventive and compelling way, the overall pacing is too messy to be anyone’s first experience with the story. This is the last omnibus in the series, and it’s a wonderful and satisfying finale… but it lacks connective tissue and the story overall feels weird and unformed in the manga. The story takes it’s time and develops these scenes and vignettes, and then suddenly jumps ahead or skips rapidly to whatever the next story beat is, with narration hurriedly explaining what you missed.
For example, one chapter ends with the robotics club being disbanded and the principal deciding to dismantle the robot, and then immediately the next chapter is the robot club entering that same robot into a tournament. There’s a line about entering the tournament as an individual instead of as an organization, but that’s as close to a segway as the manga offers.
Without the connections between the events in the manga, it mostly feels like… well, sort of like a bunch of random shit happening lol. But, like, the stuff they do dedicate time to is handled well and the art is good.