Kurogane no Linebarrel (manga)

I’m finally settling another long-standing reading debt by rereading the complete run of Kurogane no Linebarrels in one go. Linebarrels was one of the mecha manga I followed during my college years, but I never picked it back up after losing track of the serialization. The series eventually concluded at 25 volumes, and this reread was my first time experiencing the story in its entirety.

Kurogane no Linebarrels is not an exactly easy work to approach for general manga reader, largely because of how deceptive it is on the surface compared to what it actually tries to convey. Framed as the angsty adventure of a high-school boy, Kouichi Hayase, who dreams of becoming a “Seigi no Mikata” while piloting a powerful giant robot against what initially appears to be a standard terrorist organization, Linebarrels first presents itself as yet another Evangelion-inspired mecha series.

However, beneath that Evangelion-like exterior reinforced by GANTZ-level action excess and Zone of the Enders–inspired mecha aesthetics, Kurogane no Linebarrel is actually attempting to deliver a narrative closer in spirit to The Matrix. At its core, the series revolves around the theme of human free will resisting demiurgic mechanisms in a world where reality itself is gradually collapsing. 

The conflict between humanity and a demiurge-like system is a familiar trope in JRPGs, but Linebarrels is one of the few mecha works to explore it directly, and from a different angle than Evangelion

That said, Linebarrels falls short of true greatness due to its execution in the latter half of the manga. The pacing becomes erratic, and once the human protagonists and antagonists reconcile and ally after the first half, the story struggles to present a convincing sentient opposition. The absence of a clearly defined counterforce weakens the tension and makes the final stretch feel conceptually strong but narratively uneven. 

Despite its questionable approach toward the climax, Kurogane no Linebarrel still stands out for having some of the strongest mecha designs of the late 2000s, and it at least delivers a complete and coherent conclusion, something that cannot be said for several of its contemporaries, such as Break Blade or Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio. As a mecha fan, there is still plenty to take away from this roller-coaster ride called Kurogane no Linebarrel.