Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad
Title: Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad
Type: Manga, Anime, Live Adaption Movie
Artist(s): SAKUISHI Harold
Status in Home Country: Complete - 34 Volumes
Licensed By: Tokyopop, Elexmedia (Indonesia)
Scanslation Status: Complete (Vol 34, Ch 103)
Scan Groups: MangaONE, MCS, Mangascreener, FLUX, Mongolian Chop Scans, Phase 3, rendezvous22
Anime: Complete, 26 episodes
Anime Start/End Chapter: Ends at vol 11
Genre(s): Comedy, Drama, Romance, School Life, Shounen, Slice of Life
Summary: For the first 14 years of his life, Yukio Tanaka has been one heck of a boring guy. He has no hobbies, weak taste in music, and only a small vestige of a personality. He yearns for an exciting life, but his shy, and somewhat neurotic personality make him his own worst enemy. Little does he know that his life will be forever changed when he meets Ryusuke Minami, a wild and unpredictable 16-year old fresh from America, who happens to be in a rock-and-roll band. Then soon after the confrontation Yukio is thrown into a whole new world. Followed by original and unique faces, a crime boss, and a band named after Ryusuke's Frankenstein-like patched dog--Beck.
Review: I was only able to watch random episodes on cable before it got removed, because there was so much cussing on the show and I didn't want my daughter to hear it. In the end, I downloaded all the episodes and I'm in the process of rewatching all the episodes. However, the dubbed version I downloaded is the clean version and not the cussing one that was on cable. Go figure. I also ended up downloaded all the sound tracks, this anime series has got a lot of awesome songs. Some of the songs remind me a little of Green Day, "Slip Out" is sooo like Green Day like.... The great thing about the dubbed version is that the main songs were resung in English. Most of the original songs had English lyrics but the words aren't that clear. In addition, the English VAs are pretty awesome. Koyuki's voice is utterly perfect in its young scratchiness when he sings.
The story is about a boy who is pretty uninteresting at first glance. But in a series of chance meetings he ends up meeting a super talented guitarist, and it opens up a whole new world to him. He ends up learning guitar, and w/ some other people they create a band called "Beck: the Mongolian Chop Squad." Koyuki sings a couple of songs, but another member who sings rock/rap is the main vocalist. The series revolves around how meeting Koyuki has changed all the band members and how they try to get their music heard despite a lot of adversity.
The manga is interesting and goes further than the anime. I liked the clean artwork of the manga and the anime. I'll have to say that I wouldn't have tried the manga at all if not for the anime. When you read the manga, there are so many musical references that it's a bit hard to imagine w/o hearing the music, so the anime is great fodder for the imagination when reading. It doesn't have a lot of action like a typical shounen, but it kept my interest w/ the variety of characters and plots.
If you love rock music, I'd highly recommend this series.
Here's a list of my favorite songs from the series.
- Face
- Slip Out
- Follow Me
- Hit in the USA
- I Call you Love
- I've got a feeling
- Moon on the Water
- Moon on the Water full Moon Sway
Update: In the end, I've had to update the rating for this series to a 10 now. Since last week, I've re-watched & re-read the series. I feel a bit obsessive because I've been listening to the soundtracks constantly as well.
There's something hypnotic about Koyuki's voice. I'm actually talking about the English VA, who I recognize as Abe from "Big Wind Up" & Goku from "Saiyuki." I saw wish I could find the full English song of "Moon over waters."
Even the manga series is really great w/ expressing the emotions of everyone in the series. It's fascinating that even though Koyuki shows hidden skills as a singer, he's really just the back up singer in the group who only sings the slower ballads. Not to mention his guitar playing sucks, even though he gets marginally better towards the end.
How I wish the anime could have a second season. There's also a live action drama movie that I've downloaded. I wish it was subtitled though. I'm glad the series ended in a happy ending, but I wouldn't have minded if the series even dragged out more.
Update: I finally got around to watching the subbed live action movie, and I have to say that it was actually really good. The actors were spot on in looks and character portrayals. There are some changes to the plot and characters. i.e.They only mention Jim Walsh the director, and Maho is the one that records the Dying Breed Secret Live and posts it on the web. Izumi, the Koyuki's first love interest is cut from the script. For some reason, they also added Ray as playing at the Secret Live. There were a couple of other differences, but they were all relatively minor to make the film work. My only negative thing about the move was the music. Understandably, they muted all of Koyuki's singing because you're supposed to imagine how great it is. However, all the movie music was kind of lame. There was nothing catchy like the anime. By the way, the English of Ray and Maho were really good, I loved hearing Ray curse. They were all really good looking as well. Sometimes it felt like Ray was more of a main character though because Koyuki didn't seem to have much speaking dialogue. I love Chiba's actor, he's exactly spot on how the character is supposed to be. I'm changing the rating to 10 because I've been re-watching the anime, re-reading, and listening to the series everyday. Most likely I will purchase the dvd set if Funimation re-releases via BluRay.
Rate: 10