Resurrected Spotlight Manga: Bakuman

(...)

This manga tells the story of two youngsters that decide to create a manga together. One writes the strory and the other draws. We follow them since the first draft to success. In between, other stories develop. The uncle who died with excess of work and was also a mangaka. The other mangakas trying to have success and establishing each other as rivals. Mangakas that disturb the functioning of the duo. Mangakas that resource to dirty tricks. adn the main thing: the promess that the drawer will marry an aspiring voice actress when they have an anime and she is the voice of the heroin.

In the beggining, I was wondered. This travel to the editorial world started to be, before anything, very clarifying. As the story develops, we meet more and more the nuances of the editor job, which is with no doubt the most interesting part. But as time passes, this ends up not being enough, as the rythim breaks in a lot of moments, especially when new challenges and characters are introduced.

The great problem of this manga is the passge of time. 10 years pass between the beggining and the end. However, these 10 years are not shown in changes on the characters, physical or psychological. They are exactly the same people at 24 as they were at 14, which is no realistic at all. Also, the expectations and actions of the characters concerning love relationships. If at the beggining the "promess" was something motivating, the unprobality of both keeping it (if this was real) makes everything a bit weird as the time passes and they get closer to the dream.

The time does not pass on the drawings as well. Seasons are not very clear, but the main question is that the shadow palette is so dark that every action seems to be set during the night. The art also seems to get worst as the pages go on, being each time less detailed (except some special panels)

It the story sins we have - however - some very captivating characters. Each character has unique characteristics, as in design as in personality, which makes every moment very funny or emotive, depending on the situation. My favourites were Mister Hattori, editor and Kaya-chan-. However, there are characters that, being interesting, disappear without leaving a trace in a very unexpected way.

As aspect that actually became better was the emphasis given to the mangas that appear in the story. In the beggining I wanted very much to know what they were about, what was their story, how was the art, etc. The artstyle is not too different that the rest of the manga, which could be a mistake (since each artist has their own style, it would have been more interesting to see variations according to each character). But we end up knowing about some of the mangas, which I appreciated.

(...) In general, an average manga. Also one of the few long duration mangas I had the chance to read. (...)