My review will deal with all of the three seasons of the anime, covering 75 episodes of anime in total. I will start with how I got to watch this anime in the first place before I get to the content. When I first heard of the name 'Bakuman' I looked up the synopsis and...well, I was a little sceptical if the anime could entertain me. No action, no explosions, no stunning world. If you're not into this, you might as well think it is not that much fun. And so did I. Several times I thought 'Nah, let's watch this later.'. But that was a mistake. When I finally got around to watch this, I was glued to my computer. Let's get into the why now:
Story: 10/10
While there is no stunning mind-blowing storyline with a lot of explosions or stuff and the story as is does not seem that spectacular, the given story of two guys dreaming of becoming famous mangaka is executed nearly perfectly. Because the road from creating the first storybook up to getting an anime adaption is very long. More than often the protagonist trip on their journey, have to deal with strange fellow mangaka or with their personal life in general. Each and every chapter of the journey of Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi made me want to watch the next episode. The anime shows how hard it is to be successful in life. Just because you have ambitions, it does not mean you are able to achieve them. There are people who have more talent and if you are not careful, they might as well leave you behind. Such is the real life.
Furthermore I learned a lot about making a manga in general. If you just read the stuff they print in Shonen Jump you might not imagine how much sweat, blood and energy an author needs just to publish a single chapter. I don't even want to imagine the amount of time in total necessary for even one issue. After watching 'Bakuman' I can only offer my deepest respect for all the mangaka, editors and so on.
Art: 9/10
Well, I can't say much about this. Some friends argued the kinda unique style did not please them. While I can relate to their opinon, I did not mind it in the least. While it was no graphical masterpiece, the animations were fluid and the coloring fit the general mood of the anime.
Sound: 9/10
The BGM of the anime is pretty good as well. Most of the tracks underlined the atmosphere of the anime pretty well without catching too much attention as to distract from the dialogues of the characters. Which brings me to the Seiyuu. I think each and every participating character did an outstanding job of performing their specific character. More than once they made me laugh out loud while watching just because they did so well.
Characters: 10/10
This is without doubt the strongest point of this anime. When you go around and watch like 200+ anime you start to recognize a lot of character patterns. Thus people, me including, tend to get bored of a cast pretty damn quick. That's exactly why Bakuman is so great. Every character is written with so much detail and uniqueness, I don't know if you cannot like them. Especially the kinda weird ones are pretty awesome. Most of the cast develops while the story progresses. Particularly the two male main characters and to a degree the female counterpart Azuki. They start off as somewhat naive lads with a dream, gaining fame and getting more important as the show goes on. I somehow found myself relating to them several times, thinking for some moments I was them, having a dream, want to make it a reality. I got pumped, wanted to do something. This is the kind of feeling I got while watching this anime. There are not that many anime outside who amazed me to that degree.
Enjoyment: 10/10
Well, this comes as no surprise. My enjoyment is the sum of all the aspects mentioned above. Thus I will not go into detail this time.
Overall: 10/10
I want to be honest. I am pretty biased towards this show. In my mind, it is one of the best anime I have ever watched. A masterpiece, if you want to call it that. In a time where Tsundere, Jiggle-Boob-Fanservice-Anime and other pathetic shows are on a run, it is quite rare to find a single ray of light like this one here. While there obviously will be people who will not like this show after watching it, I would at least ask you to give this one a chance. You won't regret it.
