Robotics;Notes Volume 1

 The story follows Aki and Kai, the only two members of a Robotics Club at their high school. Aki is super optimistic, and her only goal is to finish building a life size robot left behind by her older sister and founder of the club. Kai is mostly there because Aki has been his friend since they were children, he's more into an online robot fighting game, and will only agree to do anything being asked from him if you can beat him in a fighting match. 

Having played the original Visual Novel in japanese I can say that the translation is great, at least I have a feeling of consuming the same story. It has character profile pages in between chapters and I always love when they have them. Only weird thing is that some of the onomatopoeia aren't translated, so you see a "Buzz" next to japanese …

Robotics;Notes is based on a visual novel, and that means there's going to be a LOT of stuff packed in, in an attempt to merge enough information from all the different playthroughs of the game. The manga manages this pretty well, although the front end is fairly information-dense, largely by necessity. There's the robotics club. There's the Anemome Incident. There's the online game Kill Ballad. There's Aki's absent sister. There's the mysterious "popular anime" that aired ten years ago (random coincidence: the Robotics;Notes anime aired about ten years ago). There's a strange girl who stands on rooftops. There's a lot to cover. Thankfully Aki's enthusiasm is catching, and it's easy to keep turning pages to cheer for her success. She's the core of this manga, moving the story forward by sheer force of will. Kaito acts as a decent snarky foil, content to spend most of his days playing online …