It looks great in my opinion. But I also thought it was some form of drawing based on legend of zelda for some reason.

I though short haired Link was being kissed by a man with Link's hair.
On further inspection I think they are supposed to be women.

I know the fix for this. A friend of mine explained how while his drawings of males were incredible, when he drew women he ended up with Lyle Alzado in drag.
He figured out the solution by looking at lots of playboy magazines. The main trick he figured out, other than reducing arm and leg size/musculature, is that when you draw your character's frame you flip the hips triangle up side down for females. *Boom* no more trannies.

As for the rest this looks like the standard "sticking point" with American manga artists. Often stuff gets to look like this in ~6th grade and never gets better.
The reason is that the artist is trying to draw manga from manga. Doing this, odds are it will never get better.
The solution is time consuming. It is a painful grind.
You do life drawing. You do it with a very critical eye. You want to exactly reproduce what you see. Yes, drawing a bowl of fruit sucks but it teaches this. After that you work on drawing naked people (because clothing is a whole other complication. And still lifes with artist's with artists mannequins. Drawing scenery is also critical unless you want to be the "I only do characters" artist. While I know a few who simply love to do back grounds they are in the incredible minority.
This is the huge thing digital gives you , take a pic, hit it with the anime filter, then color it and you have your back ground, then add characters which is what you wanted to draw anyway.
Of course after 9 hours day for a year or two trying to draw photo realistic people/stuff (10K hours to mastery), it may be a pain to find out you will then be spending a similar amount of time drawing manga until your own style evolves.
Remember if you can draw real humans perfectly, doing whatever, you can do any style you pretty much want to do. You can do rehashed DBZ for a commission and Liberatore/Serpieri/Bisley/Etc style stuff for your own work.

I think this is the book that my friend said, as stupid as it sounds, is the best book on the market for drawing characters. https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Comics-Marvel-Way/dp/0671530771/ref=cm_cr_dp_asin_lnk Unfortunately there are a few with similar names. I know it was marvel's how to draw comics or something, I think that is it. Just to check I just ordered is so I can let you know on Monday.

Basically with the manga what you are doing is drawing caricatures. If you can't draw real people, so they look like real people, your caricatures are going to suck.

Feel free to wreck some manga. Go hit craigslist and search for manga and see what you can find free/cheap. Then on each body pic draw in an artists frame. On portraits/face shots draw in a human skull to get an idea on how they are doing the caricature.

If you aren't doing anything for the next 20 years read through this whole thread. http://forums.penny-arcade.com/vanilla/discussion/105734

The arts Tyler you have and the arts Tyler borderlands has aren't too similar. It looks like any general anime/manga futuristic clothing.

Borderlands definitely has a more messy look with few protagonists having a clean uniform design. Which I can see you are trying to achieve when I see the final colored version.