This is my review of both the first nakamura volume and its sequel

I overall really enjoyed this! I think the art is very charming! It clearly shows it's inspiration while also having a unique touch to it

All the characters are fun and Nakamura is an amazing protagonist. It is very easy to root for him and understand why it's such a struggle to confess to Hirose (the boy he likes) I also lowkey hc Nakamura as autistic but that's neither here or there

But I feel as though I couldn't make a proper review if I didn't mention the elephant in the room

A few weeks after the anime adaptation started airing, a lot of people harassed the mangaka to the point that Syundei-san had to delete twitter.

Most of the people who harrased Syundei-san did it because they thought Nakamura san and its creator were "problematic"

This happened before I checked the manga and only after reading both I still think that harrasing the mangaka was taking things too far

Did I like the fact that Hirose has a clear crush on his teacher and that the sequel didn't really conclude that storyline? No

Do I agree this warranted harassing someone? Aboslutely not

I think if you were truly concerned about "problematic media" affecting people, you should have made reviews or even simple social media posts about your issues without involving the creator

Harrasing the creator didn't help anyone, despite it seeming "righteous"

I do hope Syndei-san has a good support system to which he can talk about all this and hopefully one day we get a proper conclusion to Nakamura's story

But I understand if the mangaka needs a break after all this

Ok ok ok

So far I really only shared my negative opinion on this manga.

Which is a shame because it is very good! It really goes in depth about the manga industry. The main duo of Shujin and Saiko are really fun and easy to root for. And the story has a lot of powerful moments in volume 1 alone

But GOD IS IT SO SEXIST

I know that the same creator also made death note which was also heavily criticised for being sexist but I didn't read so I went into bakuman thinking it wouldn't be that bad only FOR IT TO BE THAT BAD

Like, no Obha and Obata, I don't want to read about how "women don't have dreams like men do" 😑

Overall I do think this story is a good read about the manga industry, but the sexism is definitely something that made me almost dnf it

(I didn't because I wanted more manga indistry commentary)