Following is the short summary, that I wrote a long time ago, somewhere, in my younger days... (No sure when or where) ~

It's not easy to become and live as a mangaka, as Mashiro Moritaka knows from his late uncle. At 9th grade, while trying to keep up with reality, school and then a normal job, he left his notebook with a sketch of Azuki Miho, a girl he likes. Takagi Akito, a first-rate student found it and tries to convince Mashiro to draw a manga with his story. Mashiro doesn't like the idea and declines. Takagi, however, sticks to his dream and found out that Azuki wants to be a voice actress and has already gotten a good reply from a production company. Takagi then brought Mashiro to her house and told her his dream... Mashiro then tells her that he will write a manga with Takagi and will ask Azuki to voice their anime. Out of confusion, Mashiro asks her if their dreams become reality, will she marry him? She says yes, only if their dreams become true, and not otherwise!! Now, the lives of wannabe mangakas begin!!! Nominated for the 3rd Manga Taisho Award (2010).

I won't lie to anyone who read my review: the first thinking that comes to me when I hear 'bakuman' is a superhero story. Why, because of the 'man' duh. Ironically, it was only after mangaplus come to existence that I was exposed to what it truly is and how I can't be more wrong about what it truly is.

So Bakuman has nothing to do with a super hero story (granted there is part of it in, but not in the way that you might think it would be), instead it is a story about 2 young aspiring Middle School students in their conquest to pursue a career as bonafide mangakas. Mashiro is the artist, while Takagi is the one working on plots and stories.

While the initial premise is simple, what is not so simple lies in the process of their becoming mangakas. Bakuman provides very nice insight into mangaka work, at some point you can call it semi documentary series, of how manga is created. And while there are dubious point (such as in popularity poll among them), every single aspects to it was depicted in such a way that will enlighten you of work as mangaka and challenges they faced. All this while also showing how the authors keep up with their life outside their work.

You may ask how come it doesn't become boring? The answer lies in how skillful the writers are. To keep us entertained, they throw so many ideas about stories that 2 MC wants to make. They draw us in into Mashiro and Takagi's excited discussion about manga, and about what they would write next. Bakuman put very serious work in this: the work within works - the ideas of the stories are so well develop and there are times they would draw sketch of said ideas as a manga within a manga.

I really cannot recommend this enough. Anyone should just try to read it before judging it based on some hearsay or reviews.

... Last updated on January 21st, 2022, 1:44am

Bakuman is often referred to as a manga about making manga, and in a way is true, but I see it more as a love letter to Shonen Jump more than anything else due to how much getting published in the magazine is glorified and how friendly rivalries are sold as something that helps everyone from editors to mangakas to make the magazine better and that's a good thing, the manga really found its way to make interesting seeing Mashiro's and Takagi's journey into the manga world even tho is obvious that they will eventually make it, weirdly enough in this manga the chase of getting something published is always way more interesting than when they actually get a work published on the magazine.

Bakuman also has one of the most interesting secondary cast our there, sadly some of them got underused while 1 in particular was way too used for how lame he was , the ending was really good and im happy that this manga didn't overstayed its welcome because the last few arcs weren't nearly as good as the rest of the manga, but still, this is a manga that is definitely worth giving a shot.

... Last updated on November 16th, 2021, 5:43pm

Story: 7/10
Art: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Quality Polish Edition: 8/10
Enjoyment: 7/10
Overall: 7.6/10

... Last updated on July 16th, 2020, 5:42am

Having read manga my whole life, I really appreciated this look into the manga industry. There were parts in the second half where I felt it was shaky, maybe the pacing or something, but overall it is a really fun read

Whether or not you'll enjoy this manga is really going to be about whether or not you are interested in how manga works behind the scenes, and whether you're in the mood for a shounen battle manga. Because yes, despite the real world setting, this IS a shounen manga serialized in shounen jump, so if you're expecting for it to be 1) realistic like seinen, or 2) dark and psychological like Death Note, you will be disappointed on both counts.

If however, you accept it for what it is -- a lighthearted, slice-of-life shounen with plenty of comedy/gags, which also happens to be very educational in regards to the manga industry, then have no fear and read on!

You can see my full review of the series here: http://www.foxymanga.com/manga-review-bakuman/

... Last updated on December 5th, 2015, 1:51pm

I've only seen the anime, so I might be referring to something else entirely (but from the glimpses I got, I do not think it deviates much from the manga other than being maybe a wee bit more compact in some places).

Originally, I wanted to rant about how unbelievably annoying, shallow, dumb and whatnot Bakuman is, but Textualpoacher already mentioned most of it, I guess.

Let me add - this work is so full of sports/battle shounen manga (basically the same thing) stereotypes that you could say it actually is one. All the crap that manga kiddies must love so much ...
# suberbestest rivalfriends;
# excessive use of superlatives (like, how almost each new approach of the MC must and, for sure, will absolutely with no doubt beat their eternal super-suberbestest rivalfriend Eichi ... and then won't);
# beating enemies and recruiting them as future superbestest rivalfriends (like the tea-sipping manga girl that - for no apparent reason - looses the bit of (arrogant) personality she has in the beginning and turns into ... nothing; or like that guy doing manga with a think tank of dunno-how-much-people)
# humongous amount of (mainly, but not exclusively, male) shallow pride oozing out of every pore ...
it's all there! Yayyyyyy!

I'm not sure if this is anime-exclusive thing or if it's the manga as well, but ... At some point, ALL characters develop the habit of saying certain things - perhaps meant to be slightly more meaningful, deeper, funnier, whatever than the rest - with one eye closed. Really, ALL OF THEM. A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G. I am as peace-loving and inoffensive as one can be, but I really wanted to smack that stupid look out of their faces, hard.

What's else to say? Oh, in all fairness, the work has its good points as well: Hiamaru and his editor are funny, Kaya (Kaya? ... the girl with big tits) is kind of likeable (although a bit generic).

... Last updated on May 30th, 2015, 4:41am

Textualpoacher brings valid arguments to the table. What sells most isn't always the best, and winning in literature is something that simply does not exist. But I also think that manga is a different battlefield compared to regular literature. While it doesn't exist the struggle to compete when you are writing a story, it can be different when every week is a matter of keep working or getting fired.
But that isn't the focal point of the story. The focal point of the story is the hardwork, the dedication, the grind to get the job done. I like Bakuman because it shows you that it's not all fun and games. Those two guys struggled, worked plenty of hours a week and it payed off. It was very interesting to see how the industry works and what goes into creating a manga, there were plenty of things I didn't know. The thought process was also interesting.
The only fault in Bakuman is the romance department. That was one of the worst couples I've ever seen and totally irrealistic. Azuki Miho was probably one of the most apathic females I've ever seen in manga and she brought the quality of the story down. We hardly ever saw her or knew anything about her and we were supposed to care?
Overall a very solid work despite its minor flaws that is meant to inspire others, I recommend it highly!

If you look at the manga within the manga, you will see that they--much like the sad existence of Bakuman. itself--are premises, not stories. Anything semi-interesting in it is dark-and-edgy tryhard. Look at Nanamine's outsourced project. The high schooler killing high schooler thing is extreme for extremity's sake. Ashirogi remark that it's not terribly original and boasts bland characters but the real problem with the Nanamine's manga is the voyeuristic and sadistic glee of it. An omnipotent speaker deals out death sentences on a whim? For God's sake, and who dies first but the bullies and the hypocrites. The manga plays right into the sociopathic and righteous tendencies of angry young boys, not "lays bare man's ugliness." It's gauche. It's clumsy. It's also creatively bankrupt.

If you want non-mainstream, you talk about loneliness and depression, not--not whatever this is, and that's why Bakuman. and any of its manga within the manga cannot ever be non-mainstream. By the way, this obsession with non-mainstream is also grating on my last nerve.

Because okay, by the last half (third?) of the series, Bakuman. has been mired in this unfortunate bullshit about writing the best manga in the world, OMG. That's not the poi--you can't even do it like that--I can't even--you gauge it by volume sales WTF THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO IT. This and the obsession with being non-mainstream I can only attribute to a crisis of identity. Bakuman. is basically standard battle shounen manga fare, disguised as this manga industry insider thing, but in other battle manga, you win when you've beaten everybody else. In writing, when do you win? Do you do it by outselling everyone else? But the most popular thing is rarely ever also the best, so they also have to be non-mainstream. But, maybe the problem was Ashirogi having a goal in the first place, because Bakuman. purports to be about writing, and there's no goal in writing. There's the process, and that's it. You don't "beat" your rivals. If Bakuman. knows anything about rivalry in literature, it would know that literary rivalries are carried out in barely-or-not-at-all veiled attacks, conceiled in the works themselves. Writers form allegiances based on philosophical agreements and it's a competition of ideologies, not sales, not really. There's a really tone-deaf moment in the middle of the series when the editors discuss whether or not PCP can "beat" Nizuma Eiji's manga, and in the course of it not only implicitly equate popularity and quality, but also say that PCP is the best thing they have ever read. The only thing illuminating about the industry to come out of it is that the people inside the industry are prone to hyperbole.

Here Bakuman. loses track entirely, because the goal of Ashirogi is nebulously defined and because Bakuman. doesn't have meaningful character development to fall back on. Part of the identity crisis, I think, is the Ashirogi brand. Consider this, how does any of Takagi and Mashiro's life experience play into their work? Or, does their having literally no life experience impede their ability to write any meaningful story? Or, does their utter lack of personality impede Bakuman.'s chances of having a meaningful ending?

The first time I remember being inspired by Bakuman., I think, was when they talked about changing Jump. They never do that, because in reality Bakuman. is as stagnant as Jump is itself. A big arc about defying authority boils down to a mangaka wanting to work himself to death and the editors not enabling that behavior?! They flirted with jumping ship to another magazine for one minute and one second, but that pays off no tension whatsoever because OMG they don't get to fulfill their dreams exactly the way they want to fulfill it? Those stakes are absolutely meaningless and terrible, moreso for that fact that they don't follow through with it.

Bakuman. is not courageous. It doesn't evolve beyond its premise--manga about manga! We'll get married when an absurdly specific condition is met! Even though there's some interpersonal stuff in the middle of the frantic story, Bakuman. never quite earns those emotional beats, especially the romantic ones. The camaraderie between the mangaka, I buy, but the central romance? Blergh. I want the camaraderie to be tested. I want Ashirogi to outstrip the others so far that it engenders jealousy--and not just from the ugly characters. I want them to have clash of ideals and integrity. I want Bakuman. to want to be better than it is.

... Last updated on September 10th, 2014, 9:01pm

This was amazing. The plot about being a mangaka is just pretty strong. Things are explained in details, yet it felt like reading a pretty light story. The romance was pretty good as well. Well, loved it!