This series started off a little slow, but I ended up loving it. The artwork was great, the writing was great, and it’s definitely a successful follow-up to Death Note. Death Note is like a mainstream cult-series, but Bakuman is accessible to a much wider audience.
Manga can get expensive, and luckily I was able to check the entire series out from the library. That being said, if you’re looking for a quality series to invest in, I highly recommend Bakuman. It’s a manga about making manga, so if you like reading manga, then you’ll probably like this manga. Does that make sense?
It started off a little slow, but once the colorful supporting cast of characters was introduced, I really got into the series. It could be a little text-heavy at times, but I appreciated the explanations about the manga industry. It’s a series that successfully blends comedy, drama, and romance. A romamedy, if you will.
Since a lot of the scenes take place in the Weekly Shonen Jump Office, there are references to actual manga series like Bleach and One-Piece. Most of the stories within this story are fictional though, and it’s interesting to see the creative ideas that the protagonist duo of Mashiro Moritaka and Akito Takagi, pen-name Muto Ashirogi, can come up with.
Though there isn’t a lot of actual romance in the story, the childhood romance of Mashiro and Miho Azuki is the fuel for its plot. In their third-year of middle school, Takagi finds Mashiro’s notebook in class and sees his beautiful drawing of Miho. Mashiro gets embarrassed, but rather than teasing him for his crush, Takagi asks Mashiro to team up with him to create manga. With Mashiro as the artist and Takagi as the writer, this duo embarks on an epic journey to become the best manga creators in Jump.
Before they begin though, Mashiro confesses his love to Azuki, an aspring voice actress, and says that he wants her to voice the heroine of his manga when it becomes animated one day. She confesses that she loves him too, and once their mutual dream becomes reality, they can get married and be together forever. The catch is that they can’t see each other until that happens.
Mashiro and Miho’s relationship is great. They support each other and motivate each other to work hard to reach their goals, even when their best friends fail to understand how they could have such an “abnormal” relationship. It’s definitely old-fashioned, but it’s charming. Especially when we learn that Mashiro’s uncle, a struggling manga artist, literally worked himself to death trying to do the same thing with the love of his life! Mashiro becomes highly motivated to achieve everything in life that his uncle was never able to.
The manga artists and editors are all interesting characters, and I loved seeing them continually pushing each other to reach new heights. There are a lot of rivals for Muto Ashirogi, but they all help each other out when personal issues arise.
I guess I could understand some of the sexist criticism for this series, but I don’t think it’s as much of an issue as some of these other reviews make it out to be. Miho isn’t just some object of Mashiro’s dreams- the two of them are in love and they support each other, and she works very hard to earn her place with talent in a surprisingly looks-driven industry. The worst display of sexism in this series is a depiction of the voice actress/idol industry, which I’m assuming is accurate.
Kaya, Takagi’s wife, seems to be the main target of sexist criticism, but I really liked her and thought it was an amusing direction for character development when she went from being a hot-headed tomboy to a supportive housewife. She didn’t give up on her ‘dream’ just to see her friends happy- she never had a dream and she just wants to help others achieve happiness. There’s nothing wrong with that, though I will admit that they show her cleaning the studio more than a few too many times.
One of the main reasons I enjoyed this story so much is because it’s inspirational. I felt like I was there with the Mashiro and Akito from the beginning, and it was a lot of fun to watch them grow as creators and ultimately achieve their dream. Even more so with Mashiro and Miho- the last chapter, where they finally fulfill their promise to one another, almost felt unreal (I mean that in a good way, it was a very fitting ending for them).
It wasn’t mind-blowing or innovative, and it went ran a bit long, but overall this was a really good series. So 4 stars it is (I gave the last volume 5 since it was a satisfying conclusion, but I gave the other volumes all 4’s).