This is my first manga review, so please be gentle.

I'll start with rating Beck 9/10. My scoring system is probably wonky (and I may fix it down the road) but that basically means of manga that are definitely worth your time to read, this is about the middle of the priorities list.

Beck is a manga about "chasing the dream," or in a much more real sense, about the blood, sweat, and tears that are the toll for that path. The dream in this case is being a rock star, and throughout the story we see the hard-earned progress followed by inevitable setbacks that accompany our protagonist, contrasted by the overnight success of shallower counterparts, bringing into stark contrast just how meaningful success is to each of them (and the effect that wealth and fame has on them), exemplifying the adage "if you don't work for something, you won't appreciate it."

And while if you're looking for deeper overtones along those lines, they can certainly be found throughout, but it's not overt, typed out exposition at all. If you're going to get a deeper message you'll need to look at the way events and characters are come together in a big picture sense. Because of this, Beck sports a nice layering effect- if you're looking for entertainment -humor, inspiration, or just a good story- the manga reads great for you, and you don't feel like you're missing out because you don't care about some extreme moral dillemma, or challenging philosophical question. However, if you need something like that to sink your teeth into it's not difficult to find, it's just not going to be handed to you on a silver platter.

I personally have less exposure to rock, and the culture around it than probably anyone reading this, so take my word for it when I say familiarity with rock or rock bands is in no way essential to enjoying Beck.

The atmosphere that Beck projects so successfully is that of total realistic normalcy- at the beginning of the manga Koyuki, our protagonist, mentions a couple times that he feels so completely normal that he feels invisible, and that drives him to search something that help him stand out, to create an existence with some sort of meaning (not in the sense of changing the world, but rather having something to take pride in personally). As he develops, this background keeps him grounded, and he feels more like someone you would know in real life than an over-the-top, overpowered shonen protagonist. He's a little wimpy, but not obnoxiously so, except when it's dramatic and interesting for that wimpiness to be obnoxious. More than just his personality, the experiences and the personalities & experiences of his crew feel normal & relatable too. For example, the financial difficulties that come with being in a band, and dealing with the physical exhaustion of working blue collar jobs full time in order to make ends meet, and then needing to show up to practice full of energy, then having the motivation to practice on your own at home.

There's good luck and bad luck that play on them, but it feels natural, in the sense of "yeah stupid/great stuff happens that way in the real world too." The stakes feel dramatic, but appropriately so, and carry that much more OOMF because of how real the setting feels. The pace changes enough that you can binge (I read the 34 volumes of this in 4 days, and would have been faster if I'd been able) and not get tired of it.

Unfortunately, only about 1/3 of this manga is available in print (in English) and the publisher went bankrupt. From what (little) I know of rights ownership, that does not bode well for it ever being completed. What makes that particularly unfortunate is that several groups translated portions of this, and some did worse than others. Deeper in, there are more than a few parts where to convey any feeling you need to use your imagination to re-write the words in front of you.

The art, while aesthetically pleasing, lacked a sense of motion, a life of it's own, to me, but that might be because I have a tendency (which I have to correct) to read manga too fast. If you take your time to digest each panel, then you should enjoy the style. The main complaint I had was that at a lot of the climactic moments there was very little text, and you were supposed to "feel the magic" through the art, but (perhaps because I read it so quickly) those scenes felt repetitious and lost a lot of impact.

Bringing it all together, I want to remind you of the initial score- 9. With a better, more consistent translation job throughout, this could very easily be a 10, but as is it's still well worth your time. If you like Bakuman, you'll probably like this- there are more than a few parallels. Although this is technically shonen, it carried a very seinnen-like feel to me.

As I mentioned earlier, this is my first time doing a review like this, and for better or worse I didn't bother reading others to get an idea of what should be done, so I'd appreciate any feedback you have, the more specific the better. Thanks!