Reading Manga – 'Bakuman' Volume 1

Bakuman is a story about two students who decide to become manga authors, and is written by the same duo behind Death Note. The manga show us an inside look into how Shounen Jump works, and the lifestyle most Mangaka take on in order to have a running manga in the publication and make a life doing just that.

Looking at the manga, the layout on the page is quite simple and conveys the story well enough, even though it does not have a layout that pushes the medium to its fullest potential. The arrangement of the action and the speech bubbles are drawn in such a way that reading and following the events is simple, and is a pleasure to do so as your eyes are naturally guided through the page.

With the manga being a slice of life story, the characters are drawn with an expressiveness that makes it clear what the characters are feeling, elevating the emotion felt by reading. Going deeper into the panels, with the exception of a select few, all the panels have detailed backgrounds drawn. This is impressive when considering the grueling release schedule of a manga series, and these backgrounds have extremely detailed backgrounds that use up quite bit of line mileage which is equally impressive.

This is a relatable coming of age story that revolves around Mashiro and Takagi as they embark upon their dream to be Mangaka as students. This is hit at its truest in this volume straight at the first chapter when the manga puts across realistic concerns of things that we need to think about as teenagers: adults asking students what they want to do for the rest of their lives at such a tender age, and the tremendous pressure that comes with deciding whether you want to conform to what is expected or become a gambler and dare to chase after your dreams.

Even after all the risks were laid out and the consequences of failure were made clear, the two protagonists do decide to go through with chasing their dream; in addition to this the writers included a romance that is so genuine that it is hard not to root for these characters to succeed. It is genuinely inspiring to read these characters and their story, and it makes you want to chase after your own dreams and goals.

As we have two characters working together to make manga, one writing and the other drawing, we get to witness two different perspectives of making a manga. To give these perspectives context, within the first volume is a detailed, in depth orientation of the manga making process and what needs to be done, to be full time Mangaka. In addition, it really reflects on the time and effort that is needed to make one chapter, and what the creators would experience, feel, and overall go through during the process.

What is interesting about the pace of the manga is that while it has a brisk pace to it, at no point do we feel as if we have missed something in the story as it simultaneously gives plenty of room for both character development and character progression. Yet, despite how fast the story is moving, the overall growth of the characters' abilities are slow, and because they are also starting at level one, we feel as if we are a part of the journey. Both of these combined make for a great setup for a long running weekly story.

One neat aspect of this manga’s volumes is that in between chapters, there are copies of the various stages of Bakuman’s creation from the storyboard phase to the completed end of a single page from each chapter.

With all that taken into account, I would recommend investing an hour or two into reading the first volume at the very least before you decide to ultimately carry on with it or move on.