All about BECK by: Harold Sakuishi

Beck is a story about five guys in a band. A rapper (with an afro no less!), a bass player (Hot bod!), a lead guitar player (a Japanese-American!), a drummer (the reasonable one), and singer-guitarist, Tanaka Yukio who is the lead character. Yukio in the beginning wondered when his life will ever really start. Day after day, he lives such a boring life and knows for a fact that he'll never be important enough to even write an autobiography in the future.

Yukio of course eats those words up when he decided to learn to play the guitar and joins a band named Beck, named after Ryusuke's (the lead guitarist) dog which he stole in America (long story but I know most of you thought they were named after that one Beck that we know). When the band released their CD in America, their name was changed to "Mangolian Chop Squad" and was even on the Billboard Top 10 in the college radio charts.

What's interesting about Beck is that it's very unpredictable. Just when you think it's going to be a cliched conclusion, you are lead to a totally different direction. It also has a very different style to it that you don't see alot of in Shonen Manga. Sakuishi has a knack for facial expressions. His style shows alot of close ups of faces upon faces and details of the face. It's hard to explain but you'll know what I mean if you check it out (the splash page is an example). You can also tell right away that Sakuishi is very much a music fan and is very much a fan of various American music. From Nirvana to John Lee Hooker and from Jewel to the Doors. All the great artists you can ever think of are mentioned in Beck. Sakuishi also draws the different characters of Beck doing poses from famous album covers to seperate the different chapters (if you decide to read this manga you'll notice parodies of Nirvana's Nevermind album, AC/DC, James Tayolor and many more). Since this manga uses alot of American influences and characters, to keep it real, the manga is also in English when Americans are speaking to each other. Isn't that awesome? I've never seen a manga like it before.

The thing that's great about Beck is that it's just a fun read and it never gets really boring. It's awesome to read about a makeshift band with various problems working together and gathering a fanbase. It's cool to see a character like Yukio who is usually the one everyone ignores on a normal basis, be this awesome singer that everyone is amazed over. I only wish I know what his voice sounds like for real. It's cool to see a character like Chiba who's this Japanese guy that raps and has a 'fro. Totally different I say and it's also cool to see color and such a variety of people and culture. What I mean by that is that since half of this manga includes American musicians there are also African-Americans featured here which is usually absent in many manga who feature anything about the US. It's really up to date with all the music that is popular now but from the looks of it, I think Sakuishi was a fan of rock and blues music.

I hope you all go to Manga Screener and read Sakuishi's wonderful work.

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