Bakuman #1-7

Bakuman #1-7

Originally released in 2008

Written by Tsugumi Ohba

Art by Takeshi Obata

"Write what you know" is a common piece of advice given to writers, and this series takes that concept and runs with it.  It's a manga about making manga, starring an artist and writer duo who are trying to make it big in Shonen Jump.  It's written by the same artist and writer duo who made it big in Shonen Jump with Death Note, and the parallels don't stop there.

Moritaka Mashiro is an teenager who wants to live an ordinary, somewhat dull life.  His uncle was a manga author who died a few years ago from overwork, though Mashiro believes that he committed suicide, which causes him to view a reliable job as being more important than following your dreams.  However, he encounters an intelligent and passionate student in his class named Akito Takagi, whose grades make it seem like he could do just about anything that he wants to, and yet he chooses to be a manga writer.

However, he can't draw at all, so he needs a partner - seeing Mashiro's skill at drawing in his math notebook, he knows Mashiro would be perfect.  He's observant, as well - Mashiro has a crush on his classmate Miho Azuki, which should be obvious given his drawings, but Takagi picked up that Azuki has a crush on Mashiro as well, which Mashiro was unaware of.

The two of them develop a good dynamic pretty quickly, with Takagi as a passionate idealist and Mashiro as more of a realist. (Takagi wants them to make the most popular manga ever, while Mashiro is aware that this isn't realistically going to happen)

Takagi can be somewhat impulsive as well, giving Mashiro and Azuki the push that they need.  He practically drags Mashiro to Azuki's house, telling her that they're going to work on a manga largely so the two lovebirds can meet face-to-face and talk.

Inspired by his late uncle's stories about how he was in love with a girl, but never said anything and ultimately didn't wind up with her, Mashiro speaks up - and things escalate quickly from there.  Azuki wants to be a voice actress, and Mashiro says that if their series ever becomes an anime, he'd like her to be the female lead.  And then, if that happens, he wants to marry her.

Even he's shocked by what he just said, but Azuki ultimately accepts these terms, on the condition that (outside of school or coincidental meetings) the two of them don't see each other until then so they can focus on their dreams.  Mashiro and Azuki are so awkward around each other as a result that it's kind of adorable.

Now all that remains is for Mashiro to run his dream of becoming a manga artist by his parents.

His father and grandfather eventually relent, giving him advice and the key to his uncle's studio, respectively. The series goes into a great amount of detail about the process of making manga, from creating storyboards to which type of pen would be best to use.

However, it doesn't seem to pull any punches about how difficult the lifestyle can be.  It describes editors who are unreliable or have impossibly high expectations, the almost non-existent chances of succeeding, and the unhealthy lifestyle and sleeping schedule that writers and artists can have, especially when trying to meet a weekly deadline.

The series is unabashedly drawing on Ohba and Obata's experiences with Shonen Jump, with the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine playing a major role in the plot. (Mashiro and Takagi figure that their best chance of creating a series that would get an anime adaptation lies with being published in Jump, in a bit of shameless self-promotion)

It's interesting to see a manga serve as a way to show how manga series are created, and the romance is written in a way where I was rooting for them to succeed from early on. (It can be a little cheesy at times, but that's young love for you) The series comments on trends within Jump manga (such as the relative unpopularity of sports manga compared to action series) and other authors (a character who's introduced later, Nizuma Eiji, is a quirky but brilliant author and the friendly rival of the main characters who seems to be based at least in part on Eiichiro Oda of One Piece fame), though it isn't afraid to criticize the system that it operates in. It's very different tonally from Ohba and Obata's more famous work, Death Note, but it's definitely worth a read for people who are interested in manga.