Manga Review: Bakuman

Title: Bakuman
Author: Obata Takeshi, Oba Tsugumi
Release: Weekly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Shonen, Romance, Comedy
Art: A
Originality: S
Story: S
Characters: A
Humor: A
Action: A

Impression: A manga about two teenagers trying to break into the manga industry. Talk about surrealism and it’s not even done to teach one how to make a manga. The main focus of this series is how a manga is serialized and the way the industry works work from the mangaka’s point of view. It is more than entertaining and very informative. Unfortunately doesn’t explain to me why exactly a great manga like Mx0 had to be cancelled right when it was at its peak. Each development in the story whether it’s about their dreams or the relationship between the main character and his heroine engages readers and pull them right in with exciting scenes further down into the depths of the story and characters. The creators of Death Note have come up with a series that completely contrasts to their previous cult hit with this light hearted but youthful tale of two teens pursuing a dream driven to an almost dangerous levels. I am hoping that this series will become a catalyst for a change in the present way the manga world works so that new potentially great authors can be discovered much more frequently. Perhaps it’s already doing that seeing as how we’ve now got Beelzebub, Defense Devil and Medaka Box. Now all we need is an actual Otters 11.