Barakamon

Alternative Titles

English: Barakamon

Japanese: ばらかもん

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 18

Chapters: 135

Status: Finished

Published: Feb 22, 2008 to Jan 10, 2019

Genres: Comedy, Shounen, Slice of Life

Authors: Yoshino, Satsuki (Story & Art)

Serialization: Gangan Online

Statistics

Score: 8.45¹ (scored by 8,221 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #137²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #382

Members: 28,983

Favorites: 1,196

8.45

Ranked #137Popularity #382Members 28,983

MangaGangan OnlineYoshino, Satsuki (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /18

Chapters: /135

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Available on Manga Store
Barakamon
Volume 1
$6.99

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Synopsis

Seishuu Handa is considered a prodigy in the calligraphy world. However, he is extremely narcissistic about his work, and when a senior curator dismisses his award-winning piece as conventional and bland, he loses his cool, leading to potentially career-ending repercussions.

After seeing his son's immaturity, his father⁠—also a master calligrapher—sends Handa to a village in the Goto Islands as punishment. Deprived of city comforts, Handa moves into a house in the local village with the sole intention of spending his stay engrossed in calligraphy. However, the house he has moved into was previously the hideout for some rambunctious children, headed by Naru Kotoishi, who are unwilling to move out. Furthermore, the neighbors seem very interested in the calligrapher, who they see as an amusing oddity!

Despite Handa having been uprooted from his comfortable lifestyle, his experiences with the village and its people will teach him things about himself, life, and calligraphy.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Barakamon has been published in English by Yen Press since October 28, 2014 and digitally since February 24, 2015.

Preview Manga
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Related Manga

Prequel:	Handa-kun
Adaptation:	Barakamon

More characters
Characters

Kotoishi, Naru

Main

Handa, Sei

Main

Arai, Tamako

Supporting

Kubota, Hina

Supporting

Yamamura, Miwa

Supporting

Handa, Emi

Supporting

Kido, Hiroshi

Supporting

Kawafuji, Takao

Supporting

Sakamoto, Kazuyuki

Supporting

Kanzaki, Kousuke

Supporting

More reviewsReviews

Feb 17, 2021

135 of 135 chapters read

Overall Rating: 7

hexashadow13 (All reviews)

0 people found this review helpful

tl;dr: A manga about someone completely out of their element that starts off strong with good character growth, but that gets less interesting as they get more used to their environment and their character arcs results in them being less amusing.

This manga is about a calligrapher, Handa, that has an overtly strong sense of pride despite being completely incompetent at everything despite calligraphy and who isn’t very considerate of others which results in various issues. To combat this, he is forced to live in a small village on a rural island, where due to the change in environment as well as how everyone in the village forces themselves into his life, he ends up going through growth.

The first third or so of the manga, which is the portion of the anime adapts, handles this really well. Handa is an amusing character who is heavily flawed but seems like a good person at heart, and he goes through very clear slow and steady growth which as a result of him being pretty likable is satisfying to see. Watching him interact with the rest of the villagers was also amusing due to how much variety there was to the interactions as the cast is pretty large and have a pretty diverse set of personalities and they all seemed to clearly be having an influence on him. I found Handa being a fish out of water in a rural environment also acted as a good lens for me as I have absolutely no experience with rural living either, and hence could very easily put myself in his shoes. Seeing everyone else living their lives out there was interesting as well. The cast and environment also work well for the comedy which is overall pretty solid.

I think the manga begins to decline in quality after the first third though. In terms of character development Handa does grow further, but I’m not really a fan of where that growth took him. It felt too sudden and not built up too properly, and the resulting Handa just wasn’t as interesting as the one that was purely an artist. There’s also a lot of emphasis on the stories of other characters, but they all felt pretty wishy washy without anything too major happening. The manga was much more just the story of people just living their lives without any particularly exceptional stories occurring, but I also found myself getting more bored with the setting because as Handa got used to it, it was simply less of something interesting in and of itself. In terms of characters too things felt like they weren’t changing too much, wherein while there were lots of new characters introduced, none of them really stood out as much as the older characters did at first. There was a pretty major exception to that, but she was actually a character that wasn’t a resident of the village but rather Tokyo who only appeared briefly and was then dropped entirely. The comedy still has its high points, but that too started getting kind of repetitive as it played on the same personality traits for the most part. The endings were decent enough I suppose, both the ending in the 18th volume and the extra ending in the 18+1 volume, but it didn’t feel like they had all that much impact. The art was okay but nothing special.

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Aug 6, 2013

22 of 135 chapters read

Overall Rating: 8

Mahiro-Petto (All reviews)

38 people found this review helpful

Preliminary

Er, this is my first review but here goes.
When I first saw this manga I was reluctant to read it cause I didn't think it would be interesting since it had calligraphy which I think is boring and a cliche setting of a new guy in town.
But after reading the first few chapters I realized that I enjoy this manga quite a lot since it has some very funny scenes and has a semi-original story/setting about how a guy who is good at what he does but not the best so he goes to some random place and finds inspiration.

Anyway the art is very read more

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Mar 21, 2018

107 of 135 chapters read

Overall Rating: 9

katsumeko (All reviews)

6 people found this review helpful

Preliminary

Barakamon is a slice-of-life style manga that has grown into its own from its creation a little over 9 years ago.

I love this manga in its simplicity, originality, light-heartedness, and the specialized passion within each of its characters.

While the bulk of this manga centers on Seishu Handa, a calligrapher trying to find his own way, there is adequate time to give every character around him depth and their own life besides their relationship with him. Every character is given a chance to grow and change in ways that I have seen other mangas push aside or assign to a single chapter.

Throughout the read more

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Aug 11, 2016

74 of 135 chapters read

Overall Rating: 8

Rio_ (All reviews)

6 people found this review helpful

Preliminary

This manga was serialization in gangan online and Yoshino Satsuki as author.Now this manga still airing at vol 14 on Japan.This manga also got an anime adaptation on summer 2014 and get high success in my opinion

The story is about young calligrapher Handa Seishu that punching old-famous calligrapher only because his critics on his calligraph.And his punishment is exiled to rural island named Goto Island.As someone who has never lived outside of a city,we can see how Handa adapt with rural island neigbours,different between city and rural lifestyle, etc.And that make it special is the manga are filled by heartwarming and some moral value besides read more

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	Poll: Barakamon Chapter 90 Discussion CrimsonSilver4 - Oct 19, 2016	4 replies	by Saiko-sensei »» Feb 22, 4:23 PM
	Poll: Barakamon Chapter 134 FINAL Discussion CrimsonSilver4 - Aug 17, 2019	16 replies	by pandemonium91 »» Jan 14, 7:55 AM