Bakuman is a 75-episode anime divided into three seasons and is based on a manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, the same team who created the very popular and very controversial Death Note series. This series is about Mashiro Moritaka and Akito Takagi and their dream to create a manga series, which will eventually have an anime adaptation because of a promise Mashiro made to a girl.
Well that is basically the gist of the series and here's a rather lengthy summary of it. Mashiro Moritaka (aka Saiko) is a boy who once dreamed to become a manga artist like his uncle, Tarou Kawaguchi that is until he died because of overwork. Because of this, he stops dreaming about it and just hoped that one day, he will get a decent desk job. Everything changed when Akito Takagi (aka Shujin) discovered his notebook filled with some of his illustrations and offers him to create manga with him. Akito will write the story while Mashiro will do the illustrations.
At first Mashiro sorta declines the offer that is until Akito forced Mashiro to become his artist because he is planning to tell Miho Azuki, Mashiro's crush about it. With that, a dream is forged. Mashiro will do the drawings, Akito will write... and Azuki will voice the heroine of the manga once it is adapted into an anime. But it doesn't end there as Mashiro made a confession of his feelings for Azuki. If the manga ends up having an anime adaptation, they will eventually get married! Much to their surprise, Azuki agrees with Mashiro's proposal, and thus their gambling in manga to fulfill their dreams begins.
Also the way, they earned rivals in the industry, which later end up becoming their friends and help them improve their craft a bit more. There are also trials they faced when it comes to their career as manga authors, heck, even their own personal issues are also brought up in the process! But the question is, is the anime adaptation of this Ohba & Obata work worth sitting in? Much to my surprise, this series is worth watching.
Because the series is divided into three seasons, I will talk discuss each season one by one. The first season is slow when it comes to pacing as it feels more of like your average middle school drama rather than a series about two guys trying their best to fulfill their dreams. For at least 4 episodes, this anime is about the personal issues about Mashiro's parents being afraid that he will end up like his uncle before they went into the interesting stuff. As time went on, they slowly drop the school setting and the only time we see it are during the scenes when they are brain storming ideas, or in times when the authors are reminding us that they are still in middle school as they have problems when it comes to girls or when one of their classmates insult Saiko's art.
The series becomes interesting after the introduction of Akira Hattori, the man who would later become their editor when they finally signed the contract with Shonen Jump, or should I say, Shonen Jack. If there is one thing that I am bothered with the series is why the heck change Shonen Jump's name to Jack? I mean, this show keeps on doing manga references and has posters of One Piece, Naruto and Bleach, which were animated by different studios so why censor Shonen Jump? Does it have something to do with copyright issues?
The earlier works of Mutou Ashirogi as seen in the show's first season
Anyway, Hattori became a pivotal character in the growth of our duo who would later take the pen name of Mutou Ashirogi as he is the one who point out the problems of their earlier works. Like how their first work has too much dialogue, the problems with the art, which the two try their best to improve. The introduction of rival characters such as Eiji Niizuma and Aiko Iwase helped improve the two when it comes to their craft. Though Iwase was forgotten in the first season, she makes a comeback in the next season, giving Shujin a legitimate writer rival in the process.
Finally, the overall plot of the first season, it is about how the duo find their own style as manga artist. From what they discovered, Shujin can write "dark" and deep storylines and is more analytical when it comes to writing hits. In Mashiro's case, his art keeps on evolving. For most of the duration of this season, Mashiro is learning how to improve his art by becoming an assistant, while at the same time, building up the friendly competition between the Shonen Jack artists. In Shunjin's case, we see him get frustrated on what story to write for most of the time, while at the same time, struggling with his love life.
By the time the first season ended, Detective TRAP is finally serialized, but the season didn't end just that. The season ends with a cliffhanger revealing that there will be a change of editors. In the second season, Miura is in-charge, and unlike Hattori who is a supportive kind of editor, Miura likes to shove his ideas, thinking that it's the best idea. With that in mind, Shujin learns how to write comedy, which he incorporate in TRAP while they are trying to legitimize the series as a proper detective manga.
But when the series is reaching the height of its popularity, this is when Saikou was confined in the hospital because of overworking. This arc is the highlight of the second season. For once, the series is reaching its popularity, and Saikou wants to continue his work even if the doctors advised him not to. His determination to continue to the series while he is in the hospital bed is quite admirable and it is one of the rare times wherein he meets Azuki. This is also one of those rare times that I feel like the editorial department is the villains of this series. Even if their reason why they want to put TRAP in a hiatus is understandable, but the reason why they want it to last till the authors graduate from high school make them sounds like they don't support their authors.
At the end of this story arc, TRAP resumes its serialization only for it to be cancelled because of low rankings. Their next work Hirameki Tanto is a series that it feels like they are forced to write it thanks to Miura's suggestion that they should write a gag manga. Though it help them grow as authors to write something different, but that is not Ashirogi's style that people are most familiar of. The only thing interesting with Tanto's creation is that it fired up the Ashirogi-Niizuma rivalry that the authors themselves requested to cancel the series so that they can create a series worthy to rival Niizuma's CROW and +NATURAL.
PCP is the result of this gamble, and it beat CROW and +NATURAL in the rankings when it first debuted. But since this a gamble between Ashirogi and the editorial department, they need to make sure that the series will be successful or else it will be cancelled. At the end, they succeeded as the series lasted for more than a year. But before talking about its fate in the show's third season, I'll talk some of the general stuff about this series before I will forget about it.
First are the assistants, the second season introduced them and as time went on, some left, some stayed and some were added. Their interaction with Ashirogi is quite minimal, but some of these assistants are quite interesting. At least two of them ended up becoming manga authors, and even had a chance to have episodes focused around them, with Shiratori having his own story arc. Another interesting assistant is the guy who thinks that manga is art, and that the reason why his story is not serialized is because it is too deep for other people.
That said there are some times they discuss if they should create manga just for the sake of selling something to the public, or to create manga just for the sake of creating a masterpiece. This topic is something that the third season of this series handled in a very sloppy manner as there is no balance between the two sides, and it ended up with Ashirogi's desire to create a masterpiece winning. The only time we realize the importance of creating manga just for the sake for it to sell is during the times there is a serialization meeting or we hear editors talking why the ending of a certain popular series right now is disappointing.
Second is that the rivalry between authors is something that is properly brought up in the last two seasons. Giving some of the editors character focus episodes made the series more interesting as we learned that unlike Niizuma who is basically a genius, some of them are struggling just to create their work. Or in Hiramaru's case, his editor is so evil that he tries his best to run away from work if he can! This is when Team Fukuda comes in, a group created by Fukuda, which is composed of authors who will change Jack. The group made some decisions that affected the course of the magazine and at one point, frustrate the editorial department.
Though they are members of the same group, they are still rivals, especially when it comes to survey results or there is an event in Jack that they all participate. And since they are part of the same group, it is kinda expected that someone will develop feelings for a certain member. This is what happened to Aoki and Hiramaru, and their love story is one of the reasons why the show's third season is fun to watch. With the amount of authors and editors in this series, there are times that the anime tends to forget some of them. Thankfully, the show's epilogue still remembers them.
Third is how they distinguish the art of each author. Though there are times that the art styles of all the authors look the same, I give credit to the manga's illustrator, Takeshi Obata for trying his best to make each art style look distinct. Speaking of which, I like how they distinguish manga and anime in this series. When I read the manga, I was expecting that the fictional manga in this series are adapted into anime form in the anime, instead the fictional manga are presented in motion comic book form, wherein we see the panels of the manga and hear some voice overs. It's interesting and is basically a statement that manga and anime are different mediums and they have their own presentation and that we should respect the said presentation of the material.
The third season of the series feels more focus on how Ashirogi can create a manga series that can have an anime adaptation. Though PCP one successful series, the problem with it is that the editorial department doesn't want this series to have an anime because this manga is about creating perfect crimes, and they don't want kids to imitate most of the stuff coming from it! I understand the concern of the editorial department about it, especially when there is a story arc concerning about people copying the stuff from the PCP manga. They were able to resolve it thanks to the authors pointing out the difference between PCP and the fake PCP crimes, the only problem I have with it is that it was resolved in a single episode as the arc lasted for 1.5 episodes.
Nanamine in a nutshell
This is the problem I have with the final season of Bakuman, the fast pacing. The pacing is so fast that there are some story arcs lost their impact, like the fake PCP arc. Another problem I have with the final season is the introduction of another rival character in the form of Nanamine. Compared to other rival characters this series introduced, he is more of an antagonist rather than a friendly ally. He is basically the closest thing we have for a villain in this series, and to be honest, he is one bad villain. Granted, his methods are a stark contrast like that to Ashirogi, but he barely managed to beat the duo.
At the end of his story arc, he was basically forgotten in this series. There is supposed to be another story arc featuring Nanamine but it was cut out due to time constraints, and to be honest, I am fine with it because this story arc basically threw out all of Nanamine's character development out of the window. Because they cut this story arc out, most of the focus of the third season is more on the Niizuma and Ashirogi rivalry. After CROW ended with a really high note, it is also around the time Ashirogi created Reversi and after much debate, it ended up getting serialized in Shonen Jack, and PCP is transferred to a new magazine.
This is when the rivalry becomes more interesting after CROW ended and the next thing we know, the editorial department is debating on who will get an anime adaptation first! After this, the series has reached its climax as it is now more focused on Azuki and Mashiro, and after all the trials that they faced, at the end, their dreams are fulfilled and they live happily ever after. No seriously, that is basically the summary of the climax of the series. If you want a longer analysis, you can check my review of the third season's episodes 22 and 23.
If there is one thing I learned from watching this series is that the ending determines if the series is a masterpiece or not. Considering that they ended the Death Note manga in a really bad manner, and one of the characters said this kind of line, so I expect that the anime will end in a really great manner, and it did. Compared to its manga counterpart, the last episode tried its best to fix some of the loose ends that the series left when they started focusing more on the Ashirogi-Niizuma rivalry and the Mashiro-Azuki love story. It's one neat and short epilogue scene, but it did the job perfectly.
Overall, the anime adaptation of Bakuman stayed faithful to the original source material even though there are some cuts such as the manga references made by the characters in the original manga. Though the pacing started a bit slow, it improved as time went on and there are even times that the pacing is too fast that it feels like some story arcs or character developments were ignored during the process. So the big question is, is Bakuman worth watching? Answer is yes, though it is not the best anime masterpiece around, the tale of two kids pursuing their dreams in a world that is basically one big gamble is really interesting. As a bonus, we even have a look on the process in creating manga, and some of the inner politics in an editorial department.
If there are some disappointments, most of the characters introduced in the series felt irrelevant after the introduction episode. In addition, some of the characters introduced were forgotten or even didn't have the chance to grow. There are so many characters but the writers don't know how the balance the screen time of the recurring ones. And lastly, my only minor nitpick in this series is the removal of some of the manga references, I know it has something to do with copyright but come on, they were able to manage to do some non-Shonen Jump manga references in some episodes, why can't they adapt all of it?
