High school kids dream big dreams and in Japan one of the biggest is to be a successful manga artist. The financial rewards for a hit manga published in a national magazine and sold in paperback editions are substantial. And the accompanying recognition and power, with adoring fans besieging you for autographs and fawning editors begging for your next masterpiece, must seem intoxicating indeed to a would-be manga
sensei (“master”) doodling in the margins of his biology textbook.
One of those manga-besotted kids is Moritaka Mashiro aka Saiko (Sato Takeru), the teenaged hero of One Hitoshi’s buddy comedy Bakuman. But while surreptitiously drawing portraits of a pretty classmate, Azuki (Komatsu Nana), Saiko knows how tough the manga game can be.
A beloved uncle (Kudo Kankuro) was a struggling manga artist who made it into the biggest magazine of all – Weekly Shonen Jump – but died of overwork soon after. Though talented, Saiko has no intention of following in his footsteps.
Then that talent is discovered by Takagi Akito aka Shujin (Kamiki Ryunosuke), a loquacious classmate with a story-telling gift. Shujin proposes that they team up to assault the citadel of professional manga-dom, with Shujin writing and Saiko illustrating. Saiko resists until he receives encouragement from an unexpected quarter: Azuki. Their inner fires alight, Saiko and Shujin start the race to manga fame and fortune.
Their ultimate goal: Weekly Shonen Jump.
Based on a manga published in – where else? – the real-life Weekly Shonen Jump – Bakuman begins as the usual sort of zero-to-hero teen comedy, with frenzied performances from the two male principals. (By contrast, newcomer Komatsu Nana plays Azuki as a cool, self-aware teenaged goddess who can send Saiko into a dither with a bat of her eyelids.)
But One, director of the hit romantic comedy Love Strikes! (Moteki, 2011) and the indie ensemble drama Be My Baby (Koi no Uzu, 2013), is that rare combination: a perfectionist craftsman with a unbridled imagination.
In everything from his finely calibrated script (which departs significantly from the manga) to the film’s meticulous art direction (which includes an exact recreation of Weekly Shonen Jump’s stupendously messy office), One raises Bakuman far above the standard for Japanese mainstream films.
He also takes Bakuman beyond its predictable story arc of trials and triumph into territory both realistically gritty (or, given the usual state of Saiko’s drawing hand, inky) and surreally nightmarish.
After making repeated revisions to satisfy a scruffy, if supportive, editorial flunky (Yamada Takayuki), the boys win a Weekly Shonen Jump contest for newcomers.
Huzzah, hurrah, but this victory is only the beginning. Other winning contestants, including a cold-eyed teen prodigy (Sometani Shota), are fighting for a coveted spot in the magazine. And the smooth, god-like senior editor (Lily Franky), who will ultimately decide their fate, is responsible, Saiko believes, for his uncle’s untimely death.
To satisfy the manga’s loyal fans, I suppose, the film embraces some of its melodramatic plot tropes.
But its original fantasy sequences, such as a duel Saiko and Shujin fight with the prodigy using gigantic pens and battling manga frames, comment on those tropes with sly humor and dazzling CGI imagery.
Meanwhile, the film’s visual phantasmagoria illuminates the inner source of Saiko’s creativity in all its fluent beauty and dark terror – starting with his fear of ending up like his uncle.
By the end, aspiring manga artists in the audience may be wondering if success, variously defined, is worth the sacrifice.
The quest to make it as a manga pro, the film frankly warns, is life-and-death difficult, though it celebrates the camaraderie of the comrades in arms (all guys, I’m afraid) who survive the editorial baptism of fire.
And, as we see in one poignant scene, it’s all for kids flipping through comics in a convenience store.
But that’s how the dream continues.