Beck (manga)
Beck is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Harold Sakuishi. It was serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Monthly Shōnen Magazine from 1999 to 2008, with its 103 chapters collected in 34 volumes. It tells the story of a group of Japanese teenagers who form a rock band and their struggle to fame, focusing on 14-year-old Yukio "Koyuki" Tanaka, who until meeting guitar prodigy Ryusuke Minami was an average teen with a boring life. Beck won the 2002 Kodansha Manga Award in the category, and has sold over 15 million copies.
It was adapted into a 26-episode anime television series, titled Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, by Madhouse and aired on TV Tokyo from October 2004 to March 2005. A live-action film adaptation was released in 2010 and stars Takeru Satoh as Koyuki and Hiro Mizushima as Ryusuke. The series has also spawned three guidebooks, four soundtracks, a video game and a line of guitars.
Beck was licensed for an English-language release in North America by Tokyopop. The first volume was published in July 2005, but the series was discontinued after the release of volume 12 in June 2008. ComiXology released the series in English digitally between July 2018 and February 2019. Kodansha USA will begin publishing the manga in North America in fall 2026. The anime adaptation was given an English-language release by Funimation from 2007 to 2008.
Plot summary
Yukio Tanaka, known as "Koyuki" by his friends, is a regular 14-year-old Japanese boy starting eighth grade in junior high school. His boring life is changed when he saves an odd-looking dog, named Beck, from some kids. Beck's owner turns out to be an emerging rock musician, 16-year-old Ryusuke Minami, who soon influences Koyuki to start playing the guitar. The story focuses on the trials and tribulations of their rock band named Beck, and Koyuki's relationships with its members, in particular Ryusuke and his 14-year-old half-sister Maho.After hanging out with Ryusuke and seeing him play with his former band, Koyuki slowly becomes interested in Western rock music. Ryusuke gives him a guitar, but when Koyuki breaks it, Ryusuke tells him never to speak to him again. At the same time, Ryusuke forms his new band Beck, with vocalist Tsunemi Chiba, bassist Yoshiyuki Taira, and Togo, the drummer from his previous band. Koyuki begins working for, and learning guitar from, 44-year-old Kenichi Saito in exchange to have the guitar fixed.
He reunites with Ryusuke a year later, and begins to rehearse with Beck. Koyuki then makes friends with his classmate Yuji "Saku" Sakurai. When Togo leaves the band, Ryusuke has Koyuki and Saku join Beck as support musicians, becoming full members only when the band hears Koyuki sing. Eventually Beck releases their first album, which gets released on an independent record label in the United States, under the band name Mongolian Chop Squad. After gaining popularity from their US album and Koyuki being in an internationally screened concert documentary, Beck earns a spot at the music festival Grateful Sound 5, where they put on the most talked about show of the whole festival. However, circumstances cause them to part ways, making it their last performance.
Finding life tedious without being in Beck, Koyuki slowly gets the members back together, except Ryusuke, whose whereabouts are unknown. They perform a few shows as a quartet, before getting an offer to tour the US based on their Grateful Sound 5 performance. After Koyuki and Saku drop out of high school to do the tour, Beck heads to America. But after several bad performances, they are about to get kicked off the tour before reuniting with Ryusuke in Seattle. The rest of the tour is a hit and they end up appearing on national TV before heading back to Japan.
After releasing two singles, Beck goes on a nationwide tour of Japan and earn a spot at Grateful Sound 7. However, they are later cut from the lineup. They slowly bounce back after forming a tour with several similar-sounding bands, get signed to a popular British indie record label, and start recording their first full album. The now-famous director who created the concert documentary Koyuki once appeared in ends up directing their first music video. Their album and music video do well both in Japan and England, earning them numerous magazine articles in both countries. After another nationwide tour of Japan, they do a short tour of England, including a spot at the relaunch of the legendary Avalon Festival. The band then signs to a major international record label and records their major debut album in New York. With the album hugely successful worldwide, they tour Japan and America extensively, and the series then ends with Beck headlining the main stage at Grateful Sound 9.
Characters
Production
Just as Harold Sakuishi realized there were so few manga about music, his editor told him, "you love music, why not do a manga about music?" The artist joked that he had to take the chance because if it failed, he could then blame it on the editor. Describing Beck, he said, "I really like music because I believe that in ordinary life it's something not ordinary to express a thing that is not fitted to our usual life. So actually music is an approach to some kind of truth and this manga is about those people who challenge and look for the truth." He also noted that he was inspired by American culture when creating the series. Discussing the difficulty of expressing music in manga, Yohei Takami, Sakuishi's editor at Kodansha, noted how in the early volumes of Beck, they included the scores in the art, but for the later volumes, they realized they did not need to do that as "the story was synchronized in the reader's mind". Sakuishi believes he was careful to leave room for the reader to imagine what the sound was like as he did not want to push his view of it onto them. He utilized his own experiences attending concerts, including the Fuji Rock Festival, for the concert and festival scenes in the manga. In 2006, the artist said his work schedule was to draw about five pages a day.Sakuishi reportedly named the manga after both Jeff Beck and Beck. He used other famous musicians as models for aspects of the characters. The way Koyuki holds his guitar was based on that of Tom Morello, Ryusuke and his guitar playing were inspired by Jimmy Page, while Chiba's attitude and style were based on Zack de la Rocha. Sakuishi said that Chiba and Koyuki show different sides of his own personality, Chiba the evil side and Koyuki the good, while Saito was based on his swimming mentor. Chiba is also modeled after Daisuke Chiba, Sakuishi's friend and vocalist of the band Buckingham Q-Den. Buckingham Q-Den's guitarist is named Ryusuke Minami, and is therefore believed by Beck fans to be the name source of the manga's character with the same name.
Shunsuke Saga of the pop culture website Real Sound pointed out further references and inspirations. Taira's choice of bass, funky bass lines and shirtlessness all point to Flea, while the way Koyuki sings with his hands behind his back when without a guitar is taken from Liam Gallagher. Saga noted that theories on the model for Saku include Kazushi Sakuraba, as Sakuishi is a professional wrestling fan, and Dragon Ash drummer Makoto Sakurai, while the band Beck itself seems to be inspired by alternative rock acts from the 1980s and 1990s, such as Rage Against the Machine and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Media
Manga
Written and illustrated by Harold Sakuishi, Beck debuted in Kodansha's manga magazine Monthly Shōnen Magazine in its July 1999 issue. The series finished on June 6, 2008; a special 77-page side-story was published on September 6 of the same year, which depicts the last day of Eddie Lee, a popular American rock musician and Ryusuke's friend. The 103 chapters were collected by Kodansha in 34 volumes, released from February 17, 2000, to October 17, 2008. The series has since been republished in different formats. A 17-volume edition was released from December 12, 2013, to August 12, 2014. A seven-volume edition that combines five of the original volumes into one was published on September 17, 2020. A 17-volume edition was released between December 17, 2024, and August 12, 2025.The manga was licensed for an English-language release by Tokyopop, who began publishing it in July 2005. In January 2009, it was announced that Kodansha let all of Tokyopop's German licenses expire, thus including Beck. This subsequently led to Tokyopop's English license of Beck expiring as well. Only 12 volumes were published by June 2008. In 2018, ComiXology began releasing the series digitally; the first fourteen volumes were released simultaneously on July 5. The last twelve were released on February 27, 2019. In August 2025, Kodansha USA announced that they will be publishing the manga in a 2-in-1 omnibus edition, scheduled to begin in fall 2026.
Anime
A 26-episode anime television adaptation, titled Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad after the subtitle used by the band in the manga in the United States, aired on Japan's TV Tokyo from October 2004 to March 2005. It was directed by Osamu Kobayashi, animated by Madhouse and produced by Takeshi Shukuri and Yoshimi Nakajima.In 2006, Funimation announced that they had acquired the North American license for Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad at Anime Boston on May 27. Taliesin Jaffe and Christopher Bevins are the ADR directors of their English dub, while Mike McFarland served as music director.
In the English dub, many songs were re-recorded with new English lyrics and vocals. For example, the Beatles' song "I've Got a Feeling" had its lyrics completely replaced. For songs that had English lyrics in the original Japanese version, some were slightly altered to correct grammar, while a few were retained and the dub team cast English-speaking actors who sounded like the Japanese vocalists. Due to B. B. King holding a trademark on the name "Lucille", the dub changed the name of Ryusuke's guitar to "Prudence" to avoid any potential legal issues.
Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad made its North American television debut on the Canadian music channel MuchMusic on March 9, 2007, and finished on June 3. Funimation's first DVD was released in 2007, and the sixth and final in January 2008. Their English dub was released in the UK by Revelation Films and in Australasia by Madman Entertainment.