BAKUMAN’S USE OF REFERENCES

TONY T. - Writer, 4th Year, Economics and Data Science

This might be incomprehensible to someone who hasn’t read Bakuman…

There’s a point in Ohba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi’s Bakuman wherein the main characters, brainstorming their next series to submit for serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump, discuss the idea of a story utilizing the tropes of battle shounen series without the actual fights.  In the context of Bakuman’s internal story, it’s an interesting point that conceptually stems from the characters’ previous tendencies to write stories slightly edgier and less mainstream than what would be expected from a manga anthology directed primarily towards male adolescents.  What makes this small mention tucked somewhere within the series’ twenty volumes (I couldn’t be bothered to go back and find its exact location), deeply fascinating and memorable to me is that in many ways that concept encapsulates the appeal of Bakuman, alongside the authors’ previous work, Death Note, themselves.  And while I find random references generally annoying in stories, Bakuman utilizes them in a way that very much accentuates the main arc of the story and makes it all the more meaningful.

The reductive description of Bakuman is that it’s a manga about drawing manga.  But as someone without much visual artistic talent, that fails to capture the real appeal of the series: its focus on developing characters in pursuit of a goal not unlike that of traditional fighting series.  In particular, the way Bakuman frames its non-physical battles utilizes an interesting plot gimmick, the real-world Weekly Shounen Jump reader polls, upon which the characters compete for the highest ranking.  Where many series fail to grasp the audience’s attention regarding why the main goal is something that should be held in esteem, Bakuman kind of gets away rather easy because the rankings are something that have actual importance - most readers have likely read a battle shounen series prior to Bakuman, and hence there’s an inherent understanding that the competition the characters partake in is something that produced art that the reader has enjoyed.

There is no greater embodiment of this fundamental strength than the main rival character, Niizuma Eiji.  Where Bakuman’s dual protagonists, Takagi Akito and Mashiro Moritaka, are fairly generic in so far as having more innocent, pure goals (something that actually contributes to the one major flaw of Bakuman, its romantic subplot), Eiji is a pure prodigy in the sort of mythic savant qualities that figures like Toriyama Akira or Oda Eiichiro have been imbued.  In fact, the latter is who Eiji is based upon.  The real world connection to a figure that is lauded as a genius of manga isn’t itself what makes the character interesting, but it allows Eiji to serve a unique role wherein he is continuously head and shoulders over the main characters.  Niizuma Eiji is the stand-in for their goal to be the top mangaka as he represents the antithesis of their literary style while being a foil in terms of talent.  In representing the platonic ideal of what a Japanese mangaka should traditionally be expected to output, Eiji becomes the characters’ goal whilst also acting as a counterpoint as his more mainstream sensibilities match the protagonists’ more niche-appeal stories.  What more, Eiji also serves almost as a mentor figure of sorts; where many characters in Bakuman differ in their advice as art is inherently subjective, Eiji is the one character who, given his prodigious talent, is almost never wrong in any assessments made towards others’ works.

Great battle shounen are often made by rival characters, who serve as antagonists, allies, and/or mentor figures in various capacities.  Where protagonists are usually somewhat more reactive, rivals are proactive and push the story and worldbuilding further.  Bakuman, in presenting the character of Niizuma Eiji as the ultimate obstacle for the characters to overcome, manages to do just that.  This works on multiple levels.  With Niizuma being effectively a stand-in for the most popular Shounen Jump series this millennium, One Piece, his inclusion indicates what the authors hope to do with their series, in broadening the very idea of what a battle shounen story can be, beyond more traditional story structures.  With the in-universe creation of the Bakuman characters being a series which is, for all intents and purposes, basically the authors’ Death Note series, their victory over Eiji is made all the more meaningful.  Concepts like serious humor, non-traditional battles, and standalone chapters that don’t stand alone which both the Bakuman characters and the actual authors employ in all their works have gone on to influence other series.  The quality may be variable, but series like The Promised Neverland or Dr. Stone are a perfect example of this.  Where references normally serve as a non-diegetic element that brings audiences out of the story, Bakuman is in a unique position where almost all of its references, whether overt or more subtle, accentuate the points the authors are attempting to make about creation, and the intrigue of the concepts that the characters toy with.  Niizuma Eiji’s characterization both in the text and between the lines is a perfect representation of this and cements Bakuman as my favorite manga series.