Ratman—The Smallest Hero

Anybody read this? It has something like five volumes out, but no one has heard of it because they somehow managed to keep it from being spread online. Tokyopop dropped it (or crumbled, not sure which), so now the scans are popping up on mangafox, mangareader, and a few other places.

Anyway, its a very funny Henshin Hero comic set 20 Minutes in the Future, where advancements in technology have made corporate-sponsored heroes a reality. The main character really, really wants to be a hero, but he's short, so everyone just laughs at him. Then he sort of gets tricked into becoming a super villain by an evil organization.

Just read the first chapter; its pretty high quality scans/trans, too.

edited 11th Apr '12 8:56:05 AM by Discar

From what I've read of it, it seems pretty awesome so far, could you give us a link?

I was solely disapointed this wasn't about the Rat Man.

I thought I did give a link...guess not. Anyway, here's the mangareader one.

Negi Springfield wants to be a Superhero eh?

I couldn't have been the only thinking this when I saw the thread title could I?

Yeah, Tokyopop was bringing this out in the US until it imploded, so there was no real reason to resort to scanlation beyond "free" at the time. (I hope the mangareader one isn't just a scan of the Tokyopop version, that's just cheating...)

We have a page for the series Ratman so feel free to update it with what you see in the manga.

Hoping Kodansha picks this up.

Looking at the first chapter, I bet the plot twist is something like the Jackals aren't evil or something due to the comedic nature of this manga. After all, what kinda evil henchmen feed cats?

ehh, they're evil in like an antihero sort of way, or maybe Chaotic Good would be better.

Meh, its not like I am expecting a grim deconstruction ala Watchmen, but a comedic tone just makes it rather easy to predict what can happen. Don't the Japanese want their manga to be slightly unpredictable?

I couldn't have been the only thinking this when I saw the thread title could I?

You took my joke, partner.

I wish the next part could be uploaded to Mangafox or something soon.

I read the Tokyo Pop translation of the first two volumes. I've been wondering where the rest of it is. Now I know. Hopefully someone else will show the rest of it. It stopped on an annoying cliffhanger.

I really want to see the second volume.

Hmm, at least Shuuto is taller now.

Jackal seems to be "evil" in the sense that they are deliberately opposing the "good" heroes. Mircea does seem to enjoy doing petty evil acts for her own pleasure, though.

IS this still being published? (From OP) What exactley does "crumbled" mean?

Somebody said that Tokyopop went bankrupt (that is, "crumbled"), but I'm not sure if that's true. They might have just dropped a few manga, including this one.

Yes. Tokyopop went out of business in the North American market. (They may still have some part of the company going in Europe.) The reasons for this were covered in a thread about Tokyopop you can find using the search forum titles function.

No one has yet announced that they're picking up the title for North American distribution, but I believe the original manga is still running in Japan.

I loved the first volume, but couldn't find anything more beyond this one. Such a friggin' shame. It's so much better then most of the other stuff that gets released over here.

Chapter 2 is up!

Two months is a long time to wait between releases, but I guess this way makes it pretty obvious that they're not just scanning the official English version.

Well, one more chapter, and then they'll finally get started on stuff that I haven't seen before. Good.

So, I wonder what happens next?

edited 1st Nov '11 12:30:55 PM by NickTheSwing

Chapter 3 is out! But I won't link you to it .

Because the translation isn't that great?

Well, I don't know when it happened, but the translation got updated. Much better.