It stars Takeru Satoh, Ryūnosuke Kamiki, Shota Sometani, Nana Komatsu, Kenta Kiritani, and Hirofumi Arai.

High school classmates Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi, one an artist, the other a writer, decide to team up to create a successful manga series.

Moritaka desires to impress his crush, Miho Azuki, with whom he makes a promise to have voice a character in the anime adaptation of one of his works and marry once he has a successful manga.

The two make friends with Shinta Fukuda, Kazuya Hiramaru, and Takuro Nakai, three manga creators who also entered the competition.

Under the wing of their editor Akira Hattori, the two vow to beat Eiji and be the first to get to the top spot in the magazine's readers' ranking.

When Mashiro has a health issue, Weekly Shōnen Jump editor-in-chief Sasaki decides to put their manga on hiatus until they graduate.

However, with the help of their friends, Mashiro and Takagi create a chapter that not only has Sasaki change his mind, but also reaches number one in the rankings.

Director and screenwriter Hitoshi Ōne initially turned down the offer to adapt Bakuman to live-action film.

Wanting someone who could draw for the part of Taro Kawaguchi, Ōne saw Kankurō Kudō portray Shigeru Mizuki in GeGeGe no Nyōbō and knew he could pull it off.

The film has an action scene where Mashiro and Takagi "battle" Nizuma with large pens and pencils as swords.

Satoh and Kamiki ad libbed some of the parts in the film, such as the lines their characters make discussing what kind of manga they want to create when they initially team up, and Takagi's reference to Kyūkyoku!!

[5] Ōne decides who he wants to provide the music to his films before he starts writing the script or thinking about the cast.

is "a real celebration of and testament to the unique power of Japan's comics culture" and the best live-action manga adaptation he's seen this year.

[15] Mark Schilling for The Japan Times gave the film four out of five stars, with strong praise for director and screenwriter Hitoshi Ōne.