Gepetto

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Minor Spoilers

Gepetto is a sci-fi retelling of the Adventures of Pinocchio grounded in reality. It follows main characters Whale and Colodi as they attempt to find the inheritance left by Dr. Gepetto before he died and the century long war between androids and humans broke out.

The story itself is quite an intriguing one and is constantly introducing new mysteries to be solved and overcome in the battle for the inheritance. It makes you want to continue reading to solve said mysteries and find out how the characyers will move forward with the new revelations. The way it intertwines the original story of Pinocchio (not the ... Disney version) with the story as its being told is unexpected, but makes sense within the world. For myself, I would look up the various characters from the story to learn what they did in Pinocchio and how they might impact the story moving forward. The characters themselves are written with incredible depth not seen in other stories as both humans and androids grapple with their humanity and what it truly means to be alive. My personal favorite was Rosaura, an android child based off a friend of Pinnochio. She is a support android who has to rethink her life and loyalties to the cause she believes in. Every character has a complete arc with each having a satisfying conclusion by the end.

The art is serviceable but nothing special in my opinion. By no means is it bad, but it isn't groundbreaking or phenomenal. The layout of the chapters is very crowded. The panels feel bunched up on each other when they easily could have had more space in between. The lack of space, combined with entire chapters of exposition every few chapters can make Gepetto difficult to read and a slog at times. Processing the amount of information given to you at once was very difficult for me to keep up with, and I often found myself having to reread portions or unable to comprehend what exactly was being told. The world building is fine, but doesn't make much sense when you put thought into it. You're telling for 100 years all of humanity has lived in the same shelter and haven't faced any internal issues because of it? Or that there are no other shelters around the world? Despite the constant exposition, the world feels extremely small and contained when supposedly the war was worldwide. Dr. Gepetto (the character) also has too much thrust at his feet. I won't get too much into it to avoid spoilers, but the entire world shouldn't revolve around a single person.

Overall, Gepetto is well written with major formatting issues, too much exposition, and lackluster world building. For this reason, I rate it an 8.5/10, but rounded down since MAL doesn't allow decimal ratings. I'd recommend it to anybody interested in the concept or likes sci-fi grounded in reality.