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House of 1000 Manga - Bakuman.


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MajorZero



Joined: 29 Jul 2010
Posts: 359
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 10:51 am Reply with quote
Quote:
A running theme throughout the story is, should manga artists draw what they want to draw, or what they think will sell?

Why not both? If I recall correctly most of the american comic book writers do 3-4 books in a month, that means they write something for a big two plus their pet projects in Vertigo, Image, Avatar etc. Of course, there's a division of labor in american industry and mangakas usually work alone, but it's certainly shouldn't be a problem for those who work in pairs.
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2855
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 11:23 am Reply with quote
real life mangakas do both, is a running joke that any good editor lets oh great / ogure ito draw ehntai on the side, otherwise he would not be able to hold up and the hentai will start permeating inside his regular manga.

Nanamine strikes me as a representation of korean manhwa, especially his comite phase, just take a look at how much manga has this person made
https://www.mangaupdates.com/authors.html?id=134
it seems like that's what they were aiming at.

Quote:
like Iwase, who becomes a manga artist just to show up Akito


hey, at least they forgot about her promise about crawling around naked in the jump offices if she lost to takagi.
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skafreak51



Joined: 13 Feb 2009
Posts: 211
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 11:45 am Reply with quote
It's weird, I love Bakuman to death. For me it was an extremely interesting in fun read, even though I was consistently reminded about how flawed it was. The female characters were painful, the whole fact that we had main characters doing it for love and not for love of the craft, etc.

The characters were super flawed, but unlike what you may see in another series, the character's flaws in Bakuman were their strength. Like I said, it's weird to me that I love Bakuman. So much of it doesn't work, and shouldn't work, but all of the other cogs seem to fit into place beyond the flaws of the series. I guess that's why.
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st_owly



Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 5234
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 11:54 am Reply with quote
I thought the whole promise between Azuki and Mashiro was just so ridiculous I treated it as almost fantasy element. It's basically just wishful thinking for teenage boys. I was able to enjoy the series despite the horrible sexism because the other elements made up for it.
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bobob101



Joined: 28 Jun 2013
Posts: 201
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 11:55 am Reply with quote
When I read this back in my high school days, I did not notice any of those sexist aspects. Kinda makes me reluctant to revisit.

To turn the creation of Shonen Manga into a Shonen Manga is just kind of meta humor I love.

Good luck with the Kickstarter, I can't wait to see the reward tiers.

Shirobako > Bakuman

(Fight Me!)
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Utsuro no Hako



Joined: 18 May 2012
Posts: 1032
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 12:21 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
The main female characters are either bitter, man-hating viragos motivated by grudges against men who rejected them (like Iwase, who becomes a manga artist just to show up Akito), or patient helpmates whose role is to support their men and cook them dinner (like Miyoshi, the girl Akito chooses).


Oddly I found Miyoshi the most compelling character in the series. Her struggle to maintain a relationship with a moody workaholic felt so much more realistic than the barely existent romance between Taka and Miho or the farce of spoiler[Hiramaru and Aoki], and though her career path was tied entirely to Akito's, she came across as having more agency than Miho who was ostensibly following her own dream.
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Hameyadea



Joined: 23 Jun 2014
Posts: 3679
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:34 pm Reply with quote
I saw from the art style that it was from the same artist who drew Death Note, but when I learned that the story was penned by the same author of that manga as well, I was a bit surprised. Going from Horror, Psychological, Supernatural series to a Drama, Slice-of-Life one. And retaining that gripping feeling as well...

Kudos to them. I think that one sure both read this manga/watch the anime adaptation and watch Shirobako. They are quite good pseudo-documentaries on their side in the Japanese entertainment industry (and maybe, by extension, of the entertainment industry as a whole).
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Cyclone1993



Joined: 05 Jul 2011
Posts: 947
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:54 pm Reply with quote
Bakuman is probably my favorite manga. I found it to be interesting, insightful, inspirational, and entertaining. Sure the sexism was there but like you bring up, it's one of those things where is it just Ohba being sexist? Is he critiquing Japanese society? (Although I doubt it, but you never know). However this factor never bothered me, nor did it seem to bother my female friend who read the series.

I find it near perfect, sure it has some flaws but it hits all the things that I love about entertainment and do so in a fresh way with some great art.

The characters were usually interesting and Nakai despite what he became is forever interesting to me because he becomes Moritaka's perfect foil almost and he never seems to be unredeemable.

Sure the initial "let's not see each other until we fulfill our dreams is pretty unbelievable, as an asexual male, I appreciate the asexual nature of the relationship. Plus it made their actual interactions even cuter and more fulfilling.

Like others have said, in a way I consider Shirobako to be a spiritual successor and I would love to see a crossover between the two even if it's just fan art.

Since I adore both Death Note and Bakuman, I hope Ohba and Obata have another collaboration in the future. Considering Obata's current series will be axed pretty soon, it might happen sooner than we think.
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whiskeyii



Joined: 29 May 2013
Posts: 2240
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 2:27 pm Reply with quote
I found this series equal parts inspiring and frustrating. (I read it all the way through, but my sister dropped the first volume halfway over the asinine comment Akito makes about Miho.) I thought their struggles were interesting to follow, but the manga-by-commitee thing threw me; is that a legitimate thing, or is it just an idea taken to an extreme? It felt pretty far-fetched to me.

On the other hand, goddammit, why are the women so one-dimensional?? Everything, EVERYTHING they do is motivated by love, scorned or otherwise. Iwase in particular I thought was wasted potential (I was hoping she'd find a new passion working in manga), and her crush on spoiler[Hattori] was just awkward, and painfully so.

Aoki probably got the worst of it, though. She grew, and then stagnated, and then got paired up with the character she had the least amount of chemistry with, whose interactions with her were little more than a running joke. :/
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garlogan78



Joined: 01 Mar 2014
Posts: 171
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 2:31 pm Reply with quote
Never read the manga, but the anime was one of the worst I've seen.
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malvarez1



Joined: 17 Nov 2008
Posts: 1604
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 3:18 pm Reply with quote
Bakuman is one of my favorite manga from the last few years. For something that is about drawing, it is really engaging, full of fun character, and even a bit educational.

Yeah, it's dramatized, but that may be for the best.
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Waffitti



Joined: 17 Mar 2013
Posts: 55
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:31 pm Reply with quote
Bakuman. was the first manga I ever dropped, it was one of the first currently-running manga I kept up with.

At the time I didn't notice the sexist "subtext" (it's pretty much text), but I felt the romance was stupid (IIRC the last chapters I read were the ones with spoiler[Nakai asking out the female mangaka]).

The worst part of it overall for me was Takagi, I just couldn't stand her, and while she wasn't the one aspect that pushed me to drop the series, she pretty much drove me to the cliff. Takagi feels like Ohba saw the audience reaction to Misa & decided "You think THAT'S bad? Wait until you see the places I can make a character go to!".

The most interesting thing to came out of Bakuman. is the theory that Ohba is actually a gag mangaka called Hiroshi Gamo because the uncle figure in Bakuman. is a stand-in for Gamō & Ohba's rough drafts of pages have a similar artstyle to Gamō's.
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dm
Subscriber



Joined: 24 Sep 2010
Posts: 1345
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:09 pm Reply with quote
I read Death Note and Bakuman back to back. Doing that, it was easy to see how parts of Bakuman might have been about the creation of Death Note --- twists suggested by the editor, or new ways of approaching old manga cliches. "It's a battle manga, only the battle is one of wits!"/"We're losing popularity, we have to really change things up!" (and the way they chose to do so seemed a bit like a plot shift from Death Note).

For me, that made Bakuman a lot more entertaining.
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Maokun



Joined: 11 Nov 2004
Posts: 53
PostPosted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 10:22 pm Reply with quote
I definitely think that the most popular mangakas are those who want to draw what the readers want to read, and Eichiro Oda is clearly the best example of it.
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2855
PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 1:04 am Reply with quote
dm wrote:
I read Death Note and Bakuman back to back. Doing that, it was easy to see how parts of Bakuman might have been about the creation of Death Note --- twists suggested by the editor, or new ways of approaching old manga cliches. "It's a battle manga, only the battle is one of wits!"/"We're losing popularity, we have to really change things up!" (and the way they chose to do so seemed a bit like a plot shift from Death Note).

For me, that made Bakuman a lot more entertaining.


it was more painful/fun when they talk about ending the rivalry fo the chaarcetrs and that the manga should end/have ended there, a clear reference to how much death note sucks once the L arc is over.
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