Zatch Bell 30-Day Challenge
Day 15.) Do you have a favorite location from the series?
It's clear that Raiku likes nature and locations in general. The characters travel to many real-world locations throughout the series (England, South America, New Zealand, Milan, The Rockies), and even though we don't get to see a lot of these locations each one has a distinctive feel. This is also true in Animal Land, where the characters are always in nature, and the backgrounds are drawn in the same way as Zatch Bell's even when the characters largely aren't. I know there will be quite a bit of traveling in that series as well so I'm expecting (and I have seen one from later on) unique and detailed location shots. The pages with the sun shining on Dufort and the African tribesmen are beautiful, and are almost a preview of Animal Land in a way.
So the attention paid to the detail of locations in ZB that I perceive is kind of the reason I put this question in the challenge. And now I'll answer it.
My favorite location from the Zatch Bell series is Faudo. Yes, he counts, and I think he's a pretty obvious answer. This isn't really about Faudo's outside appearance once he's awakened, it's about what he looks like inside and Faudo Tower. Faudo Tower is just a tall collection of pillars with a huge keyhole on top and sitting on that is what looks like a small old European town. It's never explained why it's there and the characters never really talk about it but it looks cool. And the inside of Faudo is amazing - we get to see many parts of Faudo's insides and Raiku does a great job of making them feel like both places and parts of a living creature at the same time (he even has an anus). I remember the long trek through his blood vessels and the arrival at his massive heart room, and the two-page spread revealing his brain, which doesn't look very much like a brain but it kind of desolate and cool and a good place for a battle to take place. And also places like the room where Ted's battle took place, where the walls were covered by doors. It was really cool seeing as much of Faudo as we did before he was activated and then actually seeing him move around with the characters inside.
Faudo is pretty weird - it's never quite explained how he was created and why he is allowed to be teleported to the human, possibly hugely tipping the balance of what was mostly a fair battle, but he works really well as a location and setpiece.
