God gave Rock and Roll to you, then “the man” created MTV!
Packaging
The cover features the main character holding his guitar on a red iconised background, the back sort of resembles the surface of my very cluttered desk!
I believe there is also a collector’s box that resembles an amplifier to keep the series in.
Menus
It’s pretty obvious choice, an amplifier, with all the knobs and buttons being used for various functions and submenus.
Soundtrack
English 2.0, English 5.1, Japanese 2.0
I stuck with the dub and I must say Funimation have really put some effort in on this as well as making sure they could get English VA’s who could sing they also managed to translate the tunes into English quite well. If foul language offends you, you’re gonna have to wear earplugs watching this, the main characters do have a tendency to use the F word quite a bit in their conversations at times.
There’s some seriously decent music in this too. The opening theme is very catchy.
Video
4:3 Standard ratio.
A nice clean transfer
There’s English subtitles for the Japanese audio and a Signs option for the dub.
Extras
- “A Life on the Road” (Animated Music video)
- “A day in the life” A commentary featuring Christopher Bevins and Taliesin Jaffe.
- Textless songs
- Trailers for Negima and Fullmetal Alchemist
Episode Contents (This part may contain
Spoliers)
The story centres around a fourteen year old kid named Koyuki Tanaka, like most kids his age he’s sick of school and figures there must be more to life than just whiling away his precious time in the video arcade or being dragged along by his bud to perv on the girls swim team.
One night Koyuki finds himself lost in the butt-end of town and after a quick mugging bumps in to a strange dog that looks like, well, a Frankenstein dog, It’s owner an enigmatic young man named Ryusuke thanks him for stopping some kids from hurting the dog, he gives Koyuki some tissues to clean up his face and it’s not long before Koyuki returns the favour.
And thus begins his journey in to rock!
From then on in Koyuki is plunged in to an almost secret world of late night underground gigs, bars and colourful characters. He likes this world and he wants to be a part of it.
And with the aid of his long lost friend Izumi and a slightly eccentric swimmer named Saito, he begins to learn the ways of rock, the bands, the people, and the history. And it’s not long before he joins Ryusuke on a quest to form the ultimate band.
No easy task of course, it’s going to take a lot of hard work, dedication, blood, sweat and tears and Koyuki’s experiences over the course of the first volume galvanise him (also throw in a couple of potential love interests), especially when he’s decides to learn to play the guitar. But he has help, from Izumi, a girl he hasn’t seen for nearly two years, but it never shows once they meet up again. Ryusuke a former member of one of Izumi’s favourite bands; Dieing Breed, he’s a bit of a loner who keeps his quest as top priority, not even girlfriends are going to distract him (he dumps about two in this volume alone!) throw in to the mix a very “tokyo” party gal named Kayo and Ryusuke’s fiery sister; Maho and you’ve got a decent core of characters to join along the way, another character I have to mention is Chiba, a guy who can turn a friendly weekend baseball match in to a full on brawl, but trust me, the dude grows on you.
All in all this first volume was a great watch; it’s a drama, with a light sprinkling of comedy. The characters are a great, emotionally stable bunch ( not counting Chiba of course ! :p ), no misery-guts amongst them at all although Ryusuke does have a tendency to throw the odd strop at times. Beck basically makes you feel good, it makes you want to pursue your dreams, and of course, if you love rock, (old and/or new) you’ll love Beck.
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Not a bad release by any stretch of the imagination. If anything, it indicates that I should have given the last volume a higher score! Well worth watching.
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