BECK Volume 24
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Ran's relentless rush to completely bury BECK shows no signs of slowing down, effectively blacklisting them from the entire industry. To make matters worse, it turns out Koyuki's rainy-night rendezvous with the Ran family was nothing more than a scheme to rock the boat and make the guys think Koyuki betrayed them. While the misunderstanding is thankfully short-lived, the fiasco drives a wedge between Chiba and Koyuki. And so, the guys find themselves draining of their will to fight slowly but surely. Will BECK buckle to evil?!
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.
