Zetman - 4

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Four episodes in and we've already had 2 time skips. Wow, even for an adaptation that's compressing A LOT of the manga into a 13 episode anime that's pretty insane.

So far I've been less than sensitive with the fans of the manga and have been backing Zetman and the fact that it has to move at this pace to compensate for the fact that a normal pace would make the story dull and not fit into the 13 episode constraint, but after this episode I might have to reconsider why exactly was this fast pace good

The episode as a whole wasn't bad but I was less than impressed with the transition into yet another time skip ( a 2 year one this time) since it kind of sprung out of nowhere if you haven't been paying the proper attention to the other episodes. I was actually paying attention to the episodes but I could see that a few people would have been thinking who is this new girl in Jin's life - she NOT the older version of the girl that appeared for like 20 seconds in the last episode (that was Mayu), her name is Hanako. Personally I'm not happy that there seems to be yet another girl who might get involved with Jin, however I'm guessing she's going to be the girl that brings him out of his solitude which I think will only serve to add more depth to his character; even though he is already shown to be very mature and a hero "from the shadows." Hanako's introduction, portraying her character as childish and goofy (the braces might have had something to do with that) coincided with Jin performing another act of selfishness and severing ties with Konoha in order to protect her.

Other than those 2 minor grievances with the episode, the rest was yet another solid progression in the plot. The episode was almost all about Jin, with Kouga receiving what I assume is the necessary minimum screen time to remain as a rival protagonist but based on what the first 3 episodes displayed Kouga as, the minimal screen time looks to be a tool to make his grand re-entrance as a hero even more effective and keeping in mind that this episode he was only shown to be training in order to catch up to Jin, I hope an episode with him as the focus instead of Jin will be exciting.

One thing that I did observe about both Jin and Kouga, is that the both of them have now acquired "confidants" (the police detective Oyama for Jin and Hayami for Kouga), making me wonder if we will see them in other episodes. This did make me it feel almost Batman-like, more for Jin's character since he's technically orphaned but of course Kouga's relationship with his father is very weak, and this makes me consider there roles in all of this; from the way that Oyama treated Jin and their conversation you get the feeling that Jin has found a new father figure in Oyama and with Kouga you feel as if he has found someone who isn't going to just laugh at his ideals or think that he's doing the hero thing for attention.

Before the main fight for the episode started I laughed at Jin's bad habit of asking for 10,000 Yen for rescue which is brought up briefly at the beginning of the episode as well and to me, showed that he still has the remains of his inner child, giving his character less darkness and making him more likeable. The fight this time round possessed the exact same intense feeling, well maybe less, as all of the others we've seen up until now but the fight itself revealed important information about Jin's lack of ability to turn into ZET at will. Does this make it bad Not at all and in fact Jin's constant transformations into ZET would only cheapen the power and thus lower the intensity of the fight scenes, so by setting some restraints to his powers I think that should there be more fights in future episodes, we'll get more excited when Jin actually does transform into ZET but before that it seems Jin has to further hone his skills to become the red and black Zet and not the fully white one which just gace me the creeps.

The ending was another well placed cliffhanger, something Zetman has gotten good at doing, with a guest appearance from the "Sweeper". I didn't expect Jin to get attacked and this scene reminded me that even though he is a dark hero, he is still technically not a human and possibly closer to being a player and it made me also realise that the only person to have treated Jin more like a player than Human was Grandpa Amagi, who's character becomes more and more suspicious as the episodes go by; his happiness only grows when the sweeper arrives and makes us question his true intentions even more.

Next episode looks to bring back Konoha and is entitle "Alphas" so maybe the intense episode with Kouga that I'm hoping for will be realised next week or it could be another one with him being inadequate.