BECK Volume 20
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
As BECK continues to desperately drag themselves out of the muck, one day, they get an unexpected offer from Game of Death to play their new event! With the organizers behind them, there's no way Koyuki and the guys can let this chance to to waste. Soon after, they get a call from Ryusuke, who annnounces he's finally coming home...on the day of the show. Will he make it in time for the five of them to play on stage together again? With electric bands popping off on stage one after another, can BECK manage to pull of a solid show and set themselves apart from the pack?!
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.
