Bakuman was the slice of life series of this season. It shows the
struggles of two guys as they aim to get their own manga published in
Shounen Jump (or Jack, as it’s called here). It’s slow-paced and really
not much happens for the standrds of a 25-episode series, but if you
like the kind of series that take their time to tell a story the nit has
nice things to offer.
Bakuman is slow, but never stagnates. It is a shounen jump adaptation
itself, and in the same veins it’s constantly pushing its own story
forward, albeit with tiny steps at a time. Moritaka and Akito grow into
solid main characters, and also the side-characters all have their
charms. The show also offers a nice look into the process of making a
manga, along with the process of getting such a thing actually
published.
Nothing really stands out for this show aside from a few select
episodes, but it’s a perfect series to just sit back, watch and relax
to. Its content and plot are definitely interesting to keep your
attention, though it is a hard show to get into. It takes quite a while
for the characters to get some signfiicant development to the point
where they’re actually interesting enough, and this show is full of
shounen cliches until that point. Becuase of that, I can’t fully
recommend this series yet before having gotten the chance to judge its
second season (because yes, that ending does leave you hanging a bit
without resolving much or making much come together).
Overall Bakuman should have used its time a bit more efficiently. I
know that the screenshots above make it seem like really exciting, but
that’s just because the manga it’s based on is fast-paced. The anime
isn’t. There are really few series that can claim to have as much time
as Bakuman to tell their stories, and with that in mind the pacing does
move rather slow and overall, too little happens for a 25 episode
series. It does a lot of thing sirght, though.