Bakuman: Volume 1: Dreams and Reality

by Tsugumi Ohba (story) and Takeshi Obata (art), 204 pages

Fourteen-year-old Moritaka Mashiro loves to draw, but ever since his struggling manga-ka uncle's death, he has resigned himself to a boring future as an ordinary businessman. He studies, doodles sketches of the girl he secretly likes, and plods along through his days drained of all ambition. One afternoon, realizing he's forgotten his notebook--including his crushy doodles--in the classroom, he shuffles back to school to get it only to find it in the hands of his classmate, Akito Takagi...who refuses to return it until Moritaka agrees to be his partner in creating manga. The would-be artist drags his feet, but will talented Akito's enthusiasm--and enlistment of another future "partner"--be enough to motivate Moritaka to pick up his discarded dream and run with it? And if he does, will they succeed?

I've been looking forward to reading Bakuman, as it's the first team-up of these two creators since the perennially popular Death Note series (Obata also draws the award-winning Hikaru no Go series). This one again promises detailed, realistic art and slow-paced, talk-heavy plots, but without the super dark fantasy elements, instead focusing on all the nitty-gritty minutia of the process of creating manga, from the different kinds of pens used to the slim likelihood of being able to live comfortably off one's manga earnings. Right now, it's this backstage access to the industry's secrets that most intrigues me, as the characters, though fun and energetic, haven't made enough of an impression yet in this introductory volume for me to get too attached to them emotionally.