Aimless Moritaka Mashiro used to dream of being a mangaka but never since his uncle’s failure to achieve the same dream. Even so, Mashiro doodles from time to time, which catches the eye of Akito Takagi. One unbelievable event after another and Moritaka is not only committed to becoming a mangaka within approx. twenty short minutes of the first episode, but his love life depends on it.
He’s not even in high school yet.
Bakuman, it appears, is rather contemplative — more than I expected anyway. The anime takes “becoming a mangaka” very seriously. It’s more than “Gee, what should the manga be about?” followed by a montage of the two friends drawing furiously. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of typical youthful enthusiasm in the anime. If you’re looking for a story about close friends realizing their idealistic, youthful dreams, this is probably the show for you. The following image pretty much summarizes the anime thus far:
The execution of the rest, however, leaves a lot to be desired.
Early on, there’s a subplot involving Mashiro gaining his family’s acceptance. With the uncle’s death still lingering in everyone’s minds, obviously the decision to be a mangaka is going to be a little dicey. I’m not sure Bakuman pulled it off convincingly though. Both Mashiro’s father and grandfather are too readily accepting. When Mashiro first tells his grandfather, the grandfather immediately stood up, walked to some cabinet, and pulled out the key to his dead son’s studio as if he had known all along that Mashiro’s day would come. On the other hand, the mom comes off as a one-dimensional strict woman who just wants Mashiro to focus on schoolwork. She only relents because, well, the anime basically says she doesn’t know any better. No, really:
I’m sure real life moms aren’t so simplistic. I’m sure the last thing most mothers want to do is to crush their only boy’s dreams. I’m sure mothers have dreams of their own too. Imagine that.
The anime’s earnest about its protagonists’ hopes and desires. I just wish the anime put the same thought into, well, everything else. I’m sure most high school bound girls don’t just jump at any chance to get married to a boy they hardly know, but I’m glad Bakuman‘s about the 1% that do! Kids are stupid, but c’mon. Maybe there’s more to Azuki, but despite her strong determination to be a seiyu — a determination probably as strong as the boys’ conviction to become successful mangakas — we don’t get to see any of it. It’s just not encouraging that aside from a couple minutes at the end of the first episode, she has since been relegated to an object in the background, Mashiro’s princess in the castle. We don’t know anything about her besides the fact that she blushes a lot and:
Well, gee, a good family? When you put it that way! She’s literally shining. Like a prize. Before a big house. A mansion. A castle… okay, okay, I’ll let it go, but it’s not like the anime is even subtle about it or anything:
Bakuman isn’t a bad anime, but it’s disappointing in many ways. I’m not saying I wouldn’t watch it again, but it’s hard to say I’d remember to keep up after I’ve done a run-through of everything else this season has to offer.
Quick asides:
Dear Penthouse… I never thought it would happen to me… I came back to school after hours to retrieve my notebook.
Only to find that he was waiting for me.
We locked eyes… no words… one thing led to another and–
– For a JC Staff anime, the animation quality is kinda shoddy. The A animation team is probably reserved for only anime with midget tsundere protagonists.
– “She’s so pretty!” Wait, who?
Honestly I took the whole handing down of the keys as riffing on “the sword passed down to a young man who is destined to be a warrior”. I didn’t see it as a realistic depiction, but as more of a folktale convention, like Luke getting his father’s lightsaber from Old Ben Kinobi, or Arthur freeing Excaliber.
I wouldn’t say that Bakuman is the best anime this season, and I would caution people AGAINST looking at it as a guide to romantic affairs. I also agree that the artwork is not what I normally expect from J.C. Staff, but I enjoy the main plot line of the boys struggling to be mangaka.
All of the examples you listed had gravitas to them. In Bakuman, the execution was flat: “Welp, here you go. Time to move the plot along.”
From what little I recall of the manga before I dropped it out of a burning sense of irritation, part of why the whole thing with Azuki is so weird is that originally her mother just tells Mashiro that if he succeeds at becoming a manga-ka, then he can have her daughter. So J.C. Staff attempted to make it less blatantly sexist, and ended up making it… really fucking awkward.
You may be interested in reading this and this. I’m not usually a big fan of Hinano, but both posts are pretty interesting analyses of the sexism in the Bakuman manga.
After writing the post, I did look up Bakuman on Google, and among other things, I did come across an accusation of misogyny in its Wikipedia article. It wasn’t surprising to me; I had stronger convictions about the Azuki situation than it simply seeming weird. I just chose to purposefully dance around the issue myself and it’s not because I’m particularly scared to broach it (I’d like to think it has come up on this blog before) nor do I think it’s unfounded. Rather, sexism is always one of those topics that seem to encourage the most vehement denial. It seemed to me wise to allow people to come to their own conclusions this time around.
That aside, I think the charge of misogyny is a little strong, but sexism is definitely apt. This isn’t directed at you or anything; I’m merely rambling in general. It’s not that I feel any necessity to defend Bakuman (and I’m not), but polarizing remarks can sometimes be inaccurate and thus obscure the true and overt hatred of more despicable media. In my opinion, other anime this year have been much more negative and damaging in its portrayal of women than Bakuman (anime).
I rarely read manga so I can only try to judge Bakuman (anime) on its own merits. I don’t think the anime has any maliciousness to it. Insensitive and boneheaded, maybe. Nevertheless, the manga analyses (in your links and elsewhere) are interesting on a couple levels. We can’t forget people also raised similar concerns with Death Note. Most intriguing to me, however, is that I think it’s particularly telling how the adaptation tried, as you claimed, to whitewash the sexism in the manga and still came away with head scratchers like “Men have dreams a woman wouldn’t understand” and “The source of Azuki’s charm is her family….” The sad reality is that there are enough deniers of overt sexism in the real world — tackling institutionalized sexism (like racism) is even harder because of its nebulous nature.
So far the romance element hasn’t done anything for the show, for me, but I’m sure at some point they’ll focus on Azuki’s side of development into a voice actor…maybe in an OVA or something….
I doubt a throwaway series like this will get an OVA, but who knows, maybe you’ll be right.
Think animation in Bakuman is bad?
Watch Milky Holmes. It’s like they ran out of money and had to hire a 10 year old freelancers after spending their budget on the 3 other series.
Is that an an anime from this season? I’m still working my way through the list. As for Bakuman, regardless of my personal opinions of JC Staff’s work, they usually put out decent looking stuff. I just think Bakuman is jarringly ugly considering JC Staff’s previous anime.
Actually it is.
I watched a few minutes of it. Looks like a children’s anime (insert “all anime all for children” joke).