Zesty vol 1

Zesty volume one surprised me. But let me give you a bit of background first.

All information is provided to me by the people at Yaoi Press, and not second hand. Zesty was specifically sanctioned by the company and was put into planning in July 2005. The first epsiode was put up (on the web) in its entirety in Spetember 2005 and uploads on a near perfect schedule three days a week. It is a cooperation that truly scans the multicultural boundries, the writers being both in the United Kingdom and United States and an Indonesian studio provides the art work. Its target audience is young adults and takes influnences from classics like Lupin the 3rd (Lupin San-sei) and From Eroica With Love.

Having been involved with web comics from a observers point of view; I find the idea that multiple people, and multiple studios in multiple countries involved to make a single comic that updates on schedule, something that is outstanding in and of itself.

For the adult reader, I think they will find this comic a little spastic. While the story is solid , the characters are well created, it moves faster then the normal angst created lives of most of the Boy's love genre. The story tends to jump foreward quickly and then back, leading their relationship to progress at what would normally be a overly fast rate. I can say at certain times I didn't always follow all the characters and the relationships that continued, but upon a second read most things fell into place.

However, I think that most people when reading Zesty should keep in mind its target audience is meant to be younger readers (13+). While most of what is read and published in the United States leads toward the mature; Zesty allows a series that all can follow. The comic gives in to cute puns, wonderful art, and fast paced story lines to capture a young reader's interest and continued reading. The plots rely almost a hundred percent on actions instead of the deep inner thoughts of the characters or overly long monologues that many main characters in Boy's love tend to create. I think one also must take into consideration that it being a webcomic, even in print form, it has to entertain on every update and every page. This alone accounts for the quick movement that some of the readers of just manga might not be used to.

As mentioned before the art is astounding. Far beyond the expectations of most the American art that I have seen make it to print, to find this level of quality in a web comic is impressive and a pleasant surprise. Not only does it give the feel of boy's love, it is consistant and throughout all the pages it looks like it has had great time and effort provided. There are no lifeless panels and there are no backrounds half-assed here. It is more then anyone could expect from webcomics, and they have gone above and beyond to create this on a weekly schedule.

It is with this art style and the solid writing towards a specific audience that I understand why they chose to go to print. For those people that are fans, they will love to have this in their own collections; and for those that are new to Zesty, its a great place to get started in one of the more well collected web started comics that I have seen in a long time.

Zesty volume 1 is a look at the the more innocent in Boy's love, and a breath of fresh air to readers young and old alike. Its fun, light hearted, and something that people that are tired of angst and volumes of nothing but people sitting and wallowing will embrace in its entirety. Just the art is worth a look, and the nice thing is if you can't wait for volume 2, you can always keep up with it as it comes out weekly.