Sunday, October 13, 2013

Manga/Graphic Novel/Video Game Novel 2013 Review



So this year since I said that I would try to get to Level 3 of the Challenge That means I need to have at least 25 books read before the end of the year. That's at least 2 books a month. (and one extra one in at least one of those 12 months)   As a change from last year I'm gonna be putting the reviews up here as I get them done and then linking them in the monthly round-up at Mother/Gamer/Writer.  I also plan to try to remember my update my Challenge page at the end of the month. Want to see what the other people in the challenge are reading this month? Click here!








Average student Moritaka Mashiro enjoys drawing for fun. When his classmate and aspiring writer Akito Takagi discovers his talent, he begs Moritaka to team up with him as a manga-creating duo. But what exactly does it take to make it in the manga-publishing world?


My Review:

I usually don’t read manga that doesn’t have some sort of supernatural or magical twist to it, so Bakuman was definitely a change of pace for me.  It is done by the creators of Death Note so I figured I would give it a try. It was actually kinda neat.

Let’s start with the art work.  I really liked all the different characters. They were really well drawn. Also the backgrounds were very well detailed.  I also enjoyed the little storyboards that separated the chapters.  After reading about how the boys plan on setting up their book, seeing the actual storyboards for the book was neat.

The story itself was actually really interesting.  Both in how it gave a look into how a manga is created and into Japanese culture.  I didn’t know if I would enjoy it at first, but there were a lot of cute and funny parts.  I’m not sure if some of the parts I found funny were supposed to be or not, because of the cultural differences, but I didn’t get bored with the book so that is good. 
If you haven’t read a non-paranormal manga may I suggest Bakuman?  It’s well drawn and fun to read.  It has fun characters and I didn’t even miss that there wasn’t a magical fairy or fireball in sight.

2 comments:

  1. Do you enjoy watching anime as well? I love watching over reading it. Probably because I just can't get used to the right to left reading format! Heck I even have a crunchy roll subscription i pay for!

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    1. What's crunchy roll?

      I do love watching it too, however because I don't have a t.v. service at the moment I watch everything on dvds. So I haven't watched any series lately.

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