Beck
 

This anime looks really interested. My favourite manga right now is called, Beck and it's about a Japanese indie band working at coming up in the music industry.

It's being made into an anime for the fall season so I'm very excited to see what it's like. The animation in the manga is very offbeat but the way the mangaka, Harold Sakuishi draws concert scenes and understands the dynamics of playing an instrument or being in a band is really good. I'm curious to see how the show will be animated but this will probably be one to look out for, especially if you're into music.

I don't know how they're going to wrap up the show because the manga is running at (I think approximately) 18 or 19 volumes now and there's still a lot of story to be told. The anime is estimated at 26 episodes I think so it's possible there will be a second run.

Anyway, check it out. It should (hopefully) be really good.

Well, it starts off with a junior high student named Koyuki who doesn't have much interest in anything until he meets the guitarist in a respected indie band named, Ryusuke. Koyuki starts to learn guitar and as the story continues he becomes the rhythm guitarist/vocalist in their band, Beck. The story is really about Koyuki growing up and follows his relationships with the band members, a few girls and his dreams.

The real charm of this one is how well Sakuishi writes the feelings of starting an instrument and being part of a struggling band. I think he must've had experience in it because he writes it so convincingly. Even not being a musician the story would probably still be pretty interesting as the characters themselves are well crafted and develop realistically over the course of the story.

So, while it is, when simplified a story about an indie band trying to make it it's also a piece about the main characters lives and a look at the Japanese and American underground music scenes.

I watched the first episode of Beck today and was pretty glad with how it's looking to turn out.

The first episode was pretty good and covered a decent amount of ground. The only problem was that the manga paints Beck to be something of a legendary band and Koyuki's voice to be the so incredible that people are blown away when they hear it. While the band hasn't played yet the music in the show has been sort of typical Japanese indie rock with artificial "cool" injected through the use of bad English. The opening and ending songs are good enough though so their may be hope. I'm just waiting to hear Beck play . . . and see if the comments about the "incredibly funky" bass player hold up.

The voices are well done. Koyuki sounds like he's 15, which he is when the story starts and Ryusuke has the interesting kind of voice that I thought they'd give him. The parts in the show where the characters speak English are a bit rough, however. Ryusuke's accent is pretty bad considering he's supposed to be incredibly fluent and the American characters from the first episode speak very accented English as well.

:P

The animation is really neat though and the way the story is being told seems to be pretty good. This should definently be one to follow.