It's not hard to dismiss "Beck" in the opening few episodes. The animation style is quirky, inconsistent. With the face of the main character's friend looking like a horrible child's doodle and the dog looking like a weird stuffed animal, it gave off a distinct impression of amateur-ness (yeah I know that's not a real word). Just about the only thing that can impress is the detailed guitar playing scenes. The horrible Engrish spoken by some of the characters who are supposed to have grown up in America is also rather off putting. Content wise.... nope, nothing looks special here either. Here's the main character Koyuki - from his design, you can already tell he's one of those boring loser of a main character. And is he? Yep, he ticks all the boxes alright, including the telling getting-bullied-at-school one. And yeah, he also fancies this trendy, pretty, outgoing girl... no doubt she'll fall for him too, even though there are less loser-ish, more likely candidates for her affection. Even though the first few episodes failed to impress, I continued to watch as I had trouble sleeping and had nothing better to do at the time. I don't know exactly how it happened (the anime didn't really make any drastic changes, like for example "Kimi ga Nozomu Eien"), or when, but before I knew it I was addicted. The number of episodes I watched per night suddenly skyrocketted. I continued to sleep late, but now "Beck" became the reason for it rather than insomnia.
"Beck" revolves around the story of a amateur rock band named... well, Beck, trying to make it big. It pushes many of the right buttons when it comes to band matters - a good friend of mine who is in a similar situation found it very easy to connect to the stories in "Beck". He said a lot of the difficulties Beck faced such as hunting for the right members, song writing etc are the same ones he often comes across with his own band. The music in "Beck", with the exception of a few tracks, was kinda crap. The opening theme's quite addictive, but isn't that appropriate given that Beck's association with alternative rock. The ending theme is a much more pleasing offering (in fact it was probably best song in the show), sounding so polished that I wondered if it was an Oasis song, due to the rasping vocals that resembled Liam Gallagher's. Turned out it wasn't... but it was convincing enough that I had to go and check.
"Beck" does a good job immersing itself in the rock culture, with tons of references to music greats - the ending credits even featured hand drawn impressions of the likes of Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobaine and Bob Marley. Not all the artists they reference are real though, for example the Rocket Boys are made up - I checked! "Beck" accurately represents many aspects of rock scene, from the passion and counter cultural mindset to the often arrogant, pretentious rock attitudes such as dismissing pop as music that "can't save anyone" (yeah... I'm sure rock can... as shown by the huge number of famous rockstar deaths *rolleyes*) and that only rock music can be meaningful. The latter was often done unwittingly, for example one time through some lyrics which were hilariously misinterpreted. The whole incident was supposed to be a big joke, but accidently served to highlight the tendencies for rock enthusiasts to take themselves too seriously and reading too deeply into meanings that just aren't there. This isn't a criticism on "Beck" itself though, as it's a natural by-product of capturing the vibes of the rock scene so perfectly. You can tell that the makers must be totally into it themselves.
Although the cultural aspect of "Beck" is probably the only part of it that isn't obviously flawed, that's not really what makes this anime tick. It's difficult to say exactly what does. The story hasn't got any great surprises in store, with most of my early predictions hitting the mark, but is very addictive once it gets off the ground. And to its credit, it remained more grounded in reality than fantasy throughout, as the band doesn't suffer the miraculous success syndrome that most other underdog stories have. The character development is often inconsistent, I can't help but feel they changed their minds a couple of times about what they wanted to do with them. The romance isn't very well done, and is prone to being suspended for long periods of time as the storyline suddenly veers off in a different direction. But despite all these flaws, "Beck" somehow manages to connect strongly at a personal level. Even though main character has a bit of a losers trait, I couldn't help but like him, and his moments of courage often made me sooo want to egg him on. During key moments, "Beck" always comes up with the goods. For example, at the memorable climax of the series when the band was winging it at a concert, despite the music not really being to my taste, and despite Koyuki's voice sounding, as usual, less amazing than what the other characters make it out to be, I found myself bobbing my head to the music, totally caught up in the amazing atmosphere. Not only that, I somehow felt proud of Koyuki... as though he was a personal friend of mine. Perhaps that's secret of "Beck" - the down to earth characters that you can easily empathise with.
Whatever it is, this far from flawless anime is an immensely enjoyable experience that's worth sticking with even if you don't like it at first. Even now I'm still not sure why I like it so much. Perhaps it just has, as the Queen song goes, "A Kind of Magic" (sorry ... I couldn't resist! :P).
