Greatness is to be expected of this since it's made by the same duo who made Death Note
(Story: Tsugumi Ohba, Art: Takeshi Obata) although it's completely different their previous work.
Spoilers : sorry guidelines... I am trying my best not to write any spoilers but it can't be helped (T_T).
The story revolves around Mashiro Moritaka and Takagi Akito or as how they refer to each other ''Saikou'' and ''Shuujin'' on their road to become well-known mangaka and get their manga to become into an anime because of a promise they made that with Azuki Miho, a girl who aspires to be a voice actress and has a crush on Mashiro (The same goes for Mashiro towards her though, it's not one-sided).
Mashiro is the artist and Takagi is the author.
The initial dream was supposed to be that their manga becomes an anime and she voices the lead heroine but during their talk about this Mashiro thinking about what his uncle told him about how he was working so hard as a mangaka because there was a girl he wanted to marry but felt that he is not yet deserving of that as he wanted to marry her when he becomes a real mangaka who can actually make constant good works and make a living of drawing manga, he didn't want to be a gambler, someone that created hit or miss manga and would not be able to make a living out of manga easily, thinking about that Mashiro accidentally yelled out : ''If our dream becomes true please, marry me!''
She of course was happy about that and she too wanted to marry him when their dreams become true.
They promised to not meet each other until their dreams come true and to just encourage each other via e-mails.
Although this doesn't last long as they meet up several times and every time mentioning how they don't really keep their promise about not meeting each other.
Both of them take their meetings as an encouragement to achieve their dreams faster so they can always be together like this.
During the course of this 3 season series you will see many rivals and friends to the two main characters, many hardships and sweet success from time to time.
The series can give you a big idea of what actually happens in a mangaka's life from how hard it actually is to how it isn't giving authors as much freedom as we think they have because if their series get popular it will get dragged on until it loses popularity and authors are forced to end it quickly.
You will learn how hard drawing manga actually is, from mastering the G-pen to inking it and drawing everyday, pulling all-nighters and fighting deadlines.
The series have a great supporting cast with characters like :
Nizuuma Eiji, who serves as the main rival to Ashirogi Mutou (Mashiro and Takagi's pen name) but also as their main motivation and as a friend.
Fukuda (a young adult who is the very epitome of manliness and his manga works compliment that. It's either violent manga with that has panty shots like KYOSHI Knight or a manly motor racing manga like Road Racer Giri).
Hiramaru, Aoki and so forth. All you need to know is that every supporting character is great.
They basically have a friend/rival relationship with almost everyone in the series except with people like KOOGY and Nanamine who serve as more of antagonists. But Bakuman is keeping it as realistic as possible while adding shounen elements like dreams and such so they don't really hate themselves or are sworn enemies or something and this is something I really like.
Bakuman does not revolve only around the two protagonists' career as manga authors but around their personal life as well.
From how Mashiro contacts with Azuki via texts, and how sometimes he says the wrong things and has to fix whatever he has said.
How Azuki also struggles with her dream from time to time and he is there to help her.
When something revolves around Takagi's personal life it's drama with his girlfriend misunderstanding that he cheats on her to how the stories he wrote for one of their mangas made a criminal rob a bank and blame it on the manga which struck him mentally.
From time to time we also get Azuki's point of view and how she works towards her dream as well.
