So I finished reading Bakuman some years ago after watching the anime. I was re-reading and re-watching it recently. Because I have lots to tell about this, I would like to offer a review for others to read! This review is including the plot of the first chapter. So if you value not to get spoiled on this, please look at another review or read the first chapter before reading this review!

Bakuman was created by the illustrator/story author duo Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba who worked before on a manga called Death Note and who later worked on Platinum End. Bringing in lots of manga creating experience from their own career, they have lots of stories to tell and insights to give about the manga industry. And thats what Bakuman is about: Its a manga about creating manga. To some degree, it might be even valid to say that Bakuman is a "kind of" autobiography of their own life as mangaka.

/manga/30021/death-note /manga/86526/platinum-end

Story

The story follows Mashiro and Takagi, whose dream is to be published in Weekly Shounen Jump and get an anime adaptation of their very own manga. But as it turns out, the daily life of a manga creator is filled with struggles and hurdles that need to be overcome. Starting from a very young age, still in school, Takagi cleverly forces Mashiro into forming a manga creator tag team. He notices that Mashiro likes to draw and that his artwork is excellent. With this, they have a team consisting of one person in charge of the art and one person in charge of the story.

Characters

The characters are really enjoyable and seem to be realistic. There are hard workers, geniuses, strugglers and many more archetypes. Even though the cast of relevant characters is rather big, they all have their own role and its easy to understand their motivation and goals. Another thing that I really like about the character development is the fact, that this manga covers a big timespan in the life of the characters. They went from being school kids, to university students and several years later. Therefore all of them have the possibility to grow and build up a individual personality.

Its also interesting to observe how the relationship between the characters changes. How bonds are formed and how they grow together. Of course not every character is likable, just like in actual real life - and there are also antagonists. But like in an professional work-life environment Bakuman does a good job of showing that its important to get along (to some extent) with people you don't like as much as others. Antagonists are still not likable, but the relationship between the characters is portrayed in a way that they try to get along, even if they don't like each other - a good lesson for my own life.

Art and Presentation

Takeshi Obata is an absolute master when it comes to creating amazing manga artwork. Even though Bakuman is not known for many action scenes, wide spreads or really punchy visuals, the art style and quality is always on top. Especially compared to some of his early works (for example Blue Dragon Ral Grado) his art made a huge leap into a sphere not reachable by individuals like me.

/manga/30614/ral-grad-ralgrado

Bakuman is very VERY communication heavy. Almost every page has a ton of text. Its a story about talking. At some point I even needed to take a break, so I took some days off from reading after volume 10 and focussed on something else. This doesn't mean it is boring, but it might be a bit overwhelming. Conflicts are not solved by fighting, but by talking. And of course by battling with your manga serializations! A page with this much text is no rare find in Bakuman:

Realism

The most crucial factor why I love Bakuman so much is the realistic portrayal of the manga industry. Of course I don't work in the industry myself, so I don't know the details. But what is told in the story seems very realistic, logical and I think many of the industry insights are true and based on own experience of the authors.

The struggles of the characters seem also very realistic and believable to occur in the life of a mangaka. I will not name examples to avoid spoilers of the story. But there are several.

Actually I am surprised that such a "realistic" and "conversation heavy" manga like Bakuman survived in the harsh environments of Weekly Shounen Jump for this long. I would have expected the typical Shounen demographic reader to say "well, this is just talking. Boring. I want action" and then downvote the manga in the questionnaires (I learned about how manga questionnaires work and how its decided which manga to cancel from Bakuman). But Bakuman survived until the story reached a fulfilling conclusion with its final 20th volume.

The passion of the characters for creating manga might have been a big factor that readers of Shounen Jump liked it enough to reach a conclusive end. I remember reading the final chapters of the manga and it made me shed tears because I was so invested with the characters.

Whats good, whats bad? What kind of reader will like Bakuman?

So in the end... Who will probably like Bakuman? People who are interested in the manga industry, who want to learn how manga are created in a way that goes beyond the drawing part will enjoy Bakuman. People who are interested in publishing routines and how the whole industry works together also have a lot to learn from this manga. Also people who like characters with intertwining story lines have a high chance of liking Bakuman because the characters have time to grow and form deep relationships over several years of plot.

I would advise against reading Bakuman if you are not interested in consuming lots of text, because Bakuman has an insane amount of text per page.