This manga got me into The Beatles. An embarrassing admission to make as a so-called "huge fan of music", but one that I think serves as a testament to just how engrossing and effective the storytelling is. There's a real passion and reverence for the band that permanently altered popular music, which is reflected clear as day through the characters, their motivations and how they clash with one another.

It isn't all Beatle worship, however. The story opens itself up to some interesting discussions about the music industry once the initial high of becoming the Fab Four leaves our protagonists. While the cultural and language barriers are the most fleshed out and compelling, I find the conflict around the legacy of The Beatles and how their discography should be presented to be the most compelling. This level of depth is what separates "We are the Beatles" from "Yesterday", and are what I think make this manga vastly superior to that film.

On a side note, I would like to give particular praise to Kaiji Kawaguchi's artwork. A veteran mangaka and one that is greatly underappreciated in the Western manga community, his vintage illustration style enhances the authenticity of the 60s Japan setting, all the while featuring the polish that comes with having over four decades of industry experience. His understanding of posture and body language is used to great effect in conveying the silent convictions of the main characters to the viewer, and his detailed illustrations of the Beatles' iconic instruments are all incredibly pleasing to the eye. His landscape illustrations, while underutilised, are all breath taking and picturesque, effectively showcasing the world that lies at the fingertips of our heroes.

I have two main criticisms. Like all other music manga, I find that the story starts off at a breakneck pace, rocketing the protagonists to instant stardom with a smash-hit debut single. This critique plays into my second gripe with the story, being that it doesn't squeeze as much as it can from the premise. What if The Fab Four never broke into the mainstream and permanently squandered the world's most important body of music? How do the protagonists cope with the knowledge that they are presenting inauthentic and objectively inferior versions of the music that they love? What if The Fab Four presented a curation of Beatles music, skipping the earlier stuff in favour of their experimental second half? How would this impact the maturation that artists undergo throughout the musicmaking process? What would happen when the Fab Four inevitably ran out of Beatles music? It feels as though the narrative glosses over these morally dubious questions in favour of making the protagonists an unequivocal force of good.