Boku wa Beatles

As of now, this is translated through Chapter 44. I think I'll keep reading as they come out, but I'm confident my opinion has solidified and won't change.

This manga is OK. I started reading it because I'm a Beatles fan and a plagiarist. As a Beatles fan, I was expecting Beatles references and maybe some cleverness in terms of the 1960s setting, and there was far less of that than I thought there would be. The particular band that's the subject of this story could have been almost any other one and only aesthetic details would have changed.

As a plagiarist, I was expecting this story to be Author supremacist, and it is firmly so. They say all sorts of weird things to make it seem like the band members are bad people for plagiarizing the Beatles, and the effect of the release of their records on the historical Beatles is mostly dealt with off-panel. As I say, I was expecting this. It's not unusual for a professionally published story to demonize plagiarists, but I do not believe that the characters did anything wrong by plagiarizing The Beatles. In fact, an extra year of influence from the Beatles songs might make the world a better place. Maybe if the Beatles came up as an act emulating the Fab Four, then John Lennon wouldn't have been murdered in 1980. Maybe John and Paul McCartney would write different songs to try to make a name for themselves. Maybe they would have thought of a different style of song that interested them. No possibility like those is seriously explored. "The Beatles will write new, different songs" is portrayed as a pipe dream that's an unreasonable justification for the Fab Four's supposedly unreasonable behavior. It's just bigoted nonsense, but I expected it. What's funny to me is the ridiculous lengths they go to make their Author supremacy seem reasonable. For example, someone who had never been to Liverpool previously goes there and recognizes the soul of Liverpool in the songs "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Yesterday". What? What does that even mean? Paul composed "Yesterday" in France in 1964, after the Beatles had their initial successes. Lennon-McCartntney wrote "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1963 specifically because they were having an issue breaking into the American market and they wanted something that sounded more appealing to Americans. As a plagiarist, I don't think these biographical details really matter THAT MUCH, if at all, but the Author supremacist line is that they're more important than anything else. OK. So then why did you pick songs that were written outside of Liverpool? They didn't even bother to say that the Fab Four chose songs written later in the Beatles' career so that The Beatles would still be able to release their debut album unchanged. Their Author supremacy cut off potentially interesting story possibilities.

But I'd be lying if I said that the rivalry driven by differences of opinion over whether the plagiarism is permissible was uninteresting. It takes its sweet time getting to the point where the other two band members come back into the narrative and that issue comes to the fore, but it's cool when it does.

Overall, this is very much a man's comic for men, which is not typically the style I go for. The art is fine. If, like me, you prefer shonen or shojo fare, you might find the delivery of the dialog in this and certain artistic sequences stilted in comparison. I almost dropped it early because I wasn't really vibing with it. But, eventually, I promise the story decides to pick up and the 20-pages-per-issue loop took over my monkey brain. I ended up reading the half of it that was translated in less than a day.

What's this? A short Beatles-themed manga with no reviews at all? Better make one then!


Story: 7/10
Contrary to what the synopsis actually says, 2 of the band members end up in past Japan. Besides that, interesting premise. Just a shame it never went anywhere in its short runtime. Granted, there's not a whole lot you can do in 9 chapters but even for such a length, nothing really happens.

Art: 8/10
BwB looks good. In fact, it looks great. Environments are detailed and look very nice, as do characters. It's just that the faces look....off. I can't quite put my finger on it but they look sort of fucked. But that shouldn't really distract you from an otherwise great looking manga.

Characters: 4/10
One of its shortcomings. The main characters seem to be just there and the side cast is not very interesting or at least not interesting enough.

Enjoyment: 7/10
I'm a little on the fence. I liked reading it but it somehow managed to slow to an absolute crawl at times which is simply beyond annoying.

Overall 6/10:
To be honest, I'm a little on the fence. On one hand, I'm a little sad that it ended so fast because the premise has enough potential to grow into something that's at least decent. On the other hand, it was so ungodly slow and boring at times and has such a niche appeal that cancelling it might have been for the better. A 6 will have to do and that's a little disappointing. It's not bad, it's not great, it's just.....mediocre. Average. And for a manga with an idea like this, it's not what it should have been.

I really like this manga but it pains me to say that i've waited almost half a year for this manga to get fully translated, but its only translated till chapter 30.
But that doesn't stop me from making an review about it.

Story: 9/10
I really like the story so far. It has an good premise and I myself really like the Beatles as an band so the story immediately hooked me in. It does have a one down point.The beginning of the story is really slow. You could just skip the first 5 chapters if you can't take the slow placing.

Art: 8/10
Im a real sucker for 80's manga art style. Even tho i wasn't born in the 80's, i still feel nostalgic after reading such manga's. But it really depends on your taste if you like the artwork (like me) or absolutely hate it.

Character: 6/10
The character are honestly the worst part of the manga. They aren't that bad, its just that the ''feel'' kind of bland (to put it simply without spoilering too much). One of the characters i really dislike is Makoto. His gimmick in the whole story is just saying that copying the beatles isnt bad. Hearing it one time isnt that bad, but he repeats it like 100 times. It really becomes annoying after some time. This is just an pet peeve of mine.

Enjoyment: 10/10
I know its really weird to see an 10/10 enjoyment score with all the little flaws this series has but I really enjoyed it. The only thing that is really annoying is waiting one month for a chapter to be translate (p.s props to Sensescan for picking the manga up for translation). The reason why I enjoy this manga so much is because it combines my two favorite topics: Time traveling and music


Overall: 8/10
I really like this manga and I really hope this manga will be fully translated one day. It has a few flaws but I think when I've read all of the chapter the score will go up to an 9/10 or maybe a 10/10. I hope you will find this review useful and hopefully you will give this manga a try.

thanks for reading my review!