BECK Volume 1
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Fourteen-year-old Yukio Tanaka is one heck of a boring guy. He has no hobbies, a weak taste in music, and only a small vestige of a personality. His shy and somewhat neurotic personality makes him his own worst enemy. Little does he know that his life will be forever changed when he meets rocker Ryusuke Minami, an unpredictable sixteen-year-old with a cool dog named Beck. Ryusuke has just returned to Japan from America, and when he inspires Yukio to get into music, the two begin a journey through the world of rock 'n' roll dreams! Lace up your Docs and head to the mosh pit—Harold Sakuishi's highly addictive manga series that spawned the hit anime is back at last!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Manga has its share of bildungsromans that follow the path of an unathletic kid who, by dint of practice, mentorship and unstoppable will, becomes a top basketball/tennis/baseball player. Beck belongs to this genre, with the interesting twist that its nerdy 14-year-old hero, Yukio Tanaka, is on a journey from zero to rock-'n'-roller. In the beginning, Yukio knows nothing about rock and is a fan of Okinawan pop music (which, it is implied, is very uncool). Yukio meets Ryosuke, a 16-year-old rocker who was brought up in the U.S., where he played guitar in a garage band. Yukio starts going to rock clubs, listening to rock music and hanging out with his beautiful classmate Izumi, Ryosuke and Ryosuke's sister, Maho. But not until the very end of this volume do readers get a hint that playing rock music is in Yukio's future. This appealing tale is marred slightly by the inclusion of a silly and clich d peeping-tom subplot, but Sakuishi's characterizations have a strong identification factor, aided by a sharp and funny translation. The book is aimed at older teens, and there is some profanity. The clean, easy-to-follow art resembles a slightly less manic version of Eichiro Oda's art in One Piece.
