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 a forgiving 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, who plays the drums, 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. (The live-action film adaptation ends here.) 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 (they were in twelfth grade at this point) 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 anime adaptation ends here.) 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
The series follows his rapid development from living a boring average life to becoming an outstanding guitarist and singer. Before meeting Ryusuke, he only listened to Japanese pop music, having never heard a foreign band before. He is the last member recruited into Beck (along with Saku), playing rhythm guitar and singing slower songs. Throughout the series, Koyuki plays a Fender Telecaster, Gibson SG, Fender Mustang and Gretsch White Falcon at various points.
A slacker, but talented guitarist, who inspires Koyuki to pick up the instrument. Ryusuke speaks better English than Japanese, having lived in New York for eight years. He is the lead guitarist of Beck as well as its founding member. A large part of the story revolves around him and his bullet-hole ridden Gibson Les Paul guitar, named Lucille.
Maho is Ryusuke's younger half-sister and a talented singer. She is brash but emotionally fragile, and gradually builds a romantic relationship with Koyuki. As Maho is beautiful and fairly popular, Koyuki often has a hard time approaching her romantically. While she is obviously a gifted singer, Maho confides in Koyuki that she would actually like to be a film maker. She is also an amateur model.
The main vocalist of Beck, Chiba's vocals are more punk and rap-oriented than Koyuki's and thus more fitting for the majority of Beck's songs. He is easily the most volatile member of Beck, never shying away from a fight or hiding his feelings during dire situations. He is also very good at karate, which he uses in his performances. He originally took up karate because he was bullied severely in his younger days. When not busy with the band, he helps manage his family's ramen shop; he says that if Beck doesn't work out, he would open up a chain of ramen shops. Towards the end of the series, Ryusuke tells him that he should leave the band because he thinks he is not as passionate about music as the rest of the band. He complies, but quickly returns to play with the band.
Beck's bassist, Taira is the second member recruited by Ryusuke. Although he can sometimes seem uncaring or apathetic, he is actually the most mature of the band members and often offers helpful advice. He usually performs shirtless, and his main bass is a white Music Man Stingray.
Saito is a perverted middle-aged man and former Olympic swimmer who teaches Koyuki both guitar and swimming in exchange for Koyuki working for his business. Though he can be a demanding instructor, he opens up to Koyuki, even asking him for relationship advice on occasion.
Saku is Beck's drummer and the last member to join (along with Koyuki). He first becomes good friends with Koyuki at school, being the only person to talk to him while bully Hyodo instigated the entire class not to do so. He is closer to Koyuki than the other members of the band, and Koyuki often confides in him during moments of self-doubt. Towards the end of the series, he moves away to attend high school, but promises that he will return on the condition that Beck reunites. As Koyuki does reform Beck, he returns, telling the band that he essentially ran away from home to do so.
He is the original drummer of Ryusuke's band Beck. Togo and Ryusuke's were friends later he leaves the band due to some personal reasons; however, he is proud of Ryusuke.
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 (including the Eddie Lee special) 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.