Why so serious? It’s not a Death Note, is it?!
For some reason, even though it was announced a few days ago, it completely slipped my mind that Ohba and Obata’s new project was coming out very, very soon. And by very, very soon I mean the first chapter started leaking across the Internets starting Friday while I was busy watching the Olympic opening ceremonies in high def. But last night, I finally sat down and read through it, and holy shit.
Team Death Note — you win again! The first chapter of Bakuman is 58 pages long. In those 58 pages, it went from feeling eerily relate-able to downright depressing to LOLWHUT to oh, man, I want more~! I was seriously laughing out loud for more than a few pages near the end; it was fantastic. Really, despite the fact that I love crazy metafiction and self-referencing nonsense, I wouldn’t have thought that a manga about manga could be all that interesting. But I guess if Mr. Obha can make crazed, operatic choruses appropriate music for writing in a notebook because it’s apparently such an orgasmic experience, then he can do anything. Bakuman’s themes will hit very close to home to many artists, including myself, so it’s good to know that such material will be treated well. It’ll be a fun ride (will this be epic? I feel like it’s gonna be epic).
I love the fact that Bakuman references Death Note, not once, but twice! I always think it’s great with artists and writers work in clever cameos and references from their other works. For images, it’s just a fun hunt for that one random character in the background of a crowd; for actual writing/verbal references, it’s just delightful, lol. I wonder if there’ll be more of it or if it was just a first chapter thing.
Oh. Mr. Obata’s work is as amazing as ever. For some reason, Moritaka reminds me a bit of Death the Kid from Soul Eater, but Akito is like a teenage cross between Near and Matt. It’s interesting for me to see new work from Obata since I’ve never read Prince of Tennis, and I definitely look forward to what will no doubt promise to be over-dramatic portrayals of the act of… drawing! Step up from writing?
I guess that’s really all I have to say short of a page-by-page review. I’d definitely recommend people check this out though. No direct links to sources, but it takes like two seconds to find the scanlations. ;x Enjoy!
Afterthought: I wonder how long it will take Viz to license this?