Hello everyone! This week the focus on school themed manga marches on. Sometimes life can be boring as all hell, school life especially. This is such the life for the main character in this week’s manga, BECK. BECK was written by Harold Sakuishi and follows the life of Yukio “Koyuki” Tanaka. Koyuki is a 14 year-old middle school student with a boring life. One day Koyuki sees a patchwork dog named Beck after school.
His life changes after he saves Beck from being bullied by some kids. Koyuki then meets Beck’s owner, Ryusuke “Ray” Minami, an emerging rock musician who moved to Japan from America.
My piss is pure concentrated "cool".
One night while Koyuki was hanging out with Izumi Ishiguro, a childhood friend of his and a member of the school’s swim team, and some of her friends, they were confronted by three drunk American soldiers, who thought Koyuki and the rest of his group scratched up their car. Ryusuke intervenes and leads the soldiers to an alley where he pulls a gun on them.
Say "what" one more time!
Unfortunately, the gun was just a fake one that shot out flags on a string. Ryusuke hoped the soldiers were too drunk to notice, but they proceeded to give him a beat down. Koyuki, worried about Ryusuke, tracks him down and sees that he is fine, aside from some cuts and bruises. Ryusuke invites Koyuki and Izumi to his band’s next live performance. When Koyuki and Izumi try to enter the venue Ryusuke’s band is playing at, they accidentally walk in on Ryusuke arguing with the leader of his band, Eiji, over Ryusuke dying his hair to match the other band members. Koyuki and Izumi then find their way to the area with the stage, and Koyuki sees a girl on the stage singing a song entirely in English. When Koyuki comments on her young look, Ryusuke appears behind him and tells him she’s 14, Koyuki’s age. When Koyuki tells Ryusuke that he thinks she’s hot, Ryusuke informs him that she’s his sister, Maho.
At the after party for Ryusuke’s band, Koyuki runs into Maho as she’s looking for the restroom. Much like her brother, Maho has few problems with speaking Japanese, but she can’t read kanji all too well. When Koyuki points this out to her, she gets angry and flips Koyuki off whilst cursing him out. At school the next day Koyuki gets in trouble when his friend, a perverted deviant, stole Izumi’s swimsuit from the girl’s locker room and Koyuki tried to put it back. To get out of trouble, Koyuki agreed to try out for the swim team. After school, Koyuki comes upon Ryusuke and Eiji breaking up their band and promising each other that they would make the greatest band ever. Ryusuke then takes Koyuki to a concert where he is scouting members for his new band. While Koyuki thinks the lead guitarist is good, Ryusuke points out that the bassist is better. The bassist is Yoshiyuki Taira, who was based on Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Why do bassists lack the ability keep their shirt on?
Ryusuke and Koyuki meet up with Maho after the concert to grab a bite to eat, but much to the surprise of Koyuki, Ryusuke sets up an impromptu date for him with Maho, as Ryusuke ditches them to go talk to Taira.
Don't do anything I wouldn't do!
After a disastrous “date” Koyuki walks Maho home under the light of a full moon. This leads to Koyuki singing a song, and it is revealed that Koyuki has a beautiful singing voice. Koyuki begins training for the swim team under a former Olympic swimmer named Ken’ichi Saitou. Saitou is also an excellent guitar player, and agrees to teach Koyuki how to play guitar in addition to teaching him how to swim.
Ryusuke eventually assembles his band that he decides to name BECK. BECK is comprised of Ryusuke on lead guitar, Taira on bass, a man named Tsunemi Chiba as the lead vocalist, a classmate of Koyuki’s named Yuji “Saku” Sakurai on the drums, and Koyuki as the rhythm guitarist and the secondary lead singer. The band specializes mainly in punk and rap type songs, so Chiba sings the majority of their songs, but when they play slower paced songs, Koyuki is the lead singer instead.
The rest of the series focuses on the life of BECK as an upstart band, as well as the lives of the band members. The manga lasts 107 chapters broken up in 34 volumes. Like many series published by Kodansha, BECK was published in the West by Tokyopop. The series went on to spawn a 26 episode long anime and a live action movie.
There is a lot of references to various bands in the manga, and music has an important role in the series. As such it presents an interesting comparison with the anime adaptation not seen with many manga. The anime is better in that the influence of music in the series stands out more as you can actually hear the music, but at the same time the manga is better because it is longer, the story overall is better, and the characters end up more fleshed out. Either way, you can’t go wrong. BECK is a really solid series that I have to highly suggest to anyone who likes a good story in their manga, or to anyone with a love of music.