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Bakuman is a Japanese manga with a story that revolves around manga.

I was wondering when they would come to create a story for that and they did it in 2009. The only other one I know is Making Comics by Scott Mccloud, which is a one volume instructional book.

Bakuman is created by Japanese writer Tsugumi Ohba, who's also the author of hit series Death Note, and illustrator Takeshi Obata, who also draws for Hikaru No Go.

The story isn't an autobiography of the creators, but a story of two students trying to break into manga drawing. In volume 1, it begins with Akito Takagi, the smartest student in class, trying to team up with Moritaka Mashiro who can draw pretty well. Takagi's secret ambition is to be a manga creator and Mashiro is just trying to figure out what to do with his life after junior high school.

We learn as the characters learn about the trade, all the little things that go behind the scenes to create a manga series, like coming up with a story, finding an editor, getting work serialized. The characters make quite a lot of reference to real world manga, like Death Note, Shonen Jump, so it really creates a believable world. The story takes a while to build up though.

This series is translated and distributed by Viz Media. The price of the book is US$9.99 which is quite steep, compared to the Japanese edition which is only 420 Yen. I don't usually read English editions of Japanese comics because of the steep pricing. Even the Chinese translated edition is cheaper. Hopefully, in future volumes, we can also find out how manga is priced and distributed.

If you're interesting in how manga is created, this is a series you might want to check out.

4 out of 5 stars

Bakuman Vol 1 is available on Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | JP | CN)

Bakuman Vol. 1 - 01