Beck

Harold Sakuishi's Beck ran for 17 issues from 2004 to 2008 under Tokyopop's "de" imprint, bringing the acclaimed Japanese manga about a teenage rock band's rise to an English-speaking audience. This series captures the raw, scrappy energy of musical ambition, following a group of misfit musicians as they navigate friendship, rivalry, and the grind of building a sound from the ground up. It matters as a key entry in Tokyopop's early 2000s push to introduce Western readers to emotionally grounded, slice-of-life manga with a killer soundtrack of its own.