Tag: Viz

MANGA REVIEW Bakuman Volumes 1-3 By Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata Viz: $9.99 each, paperback; 194 pp. Thousands of kids in the U.S. and Japan dream of becoming manga artists; 14-year-old Moritake Mashiro, the hero of the new manga series “Bakuman,” isn’t one of them. He draws well, but he draws for fun. Moritake just assumes he’ll fulfill his parents’ wishes and become an ordinary white-collar worker, although the idea is hardly appealing. But when his classmate, A-student and aspiring writer Akito Takagi, sees Moritake’s drawings, everything changes. Akito proclaims, “Manga is the pride of our Japanese culture! We can become famous through it worldwide!” But Moritake’s not buying it. He lacks ambition, and his uncle Nobuhiro was a manga artist who scored one big hit, then worked himself to death trying to match it. Akito has also seen Moritake’s ...