Bakuman

[Spark Of Spirit]

The arc is heating up nicely. I wonder who will come out on top? Well, obviously Eiji now, but I mean of the other manga-ka I wonder who will do better.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This week's chapter had a really nice interaction between Eiji and Ashirogi. I predicted that he would end up staying at number 1 the whole time and successfully end his manga. That said, I do hope that Ashirogi is eventually able to overtake him when he starts his next series, though if this chapter was any indication Eiji is still leagues ahead of Ashirogi in terms of his skills as a mangaka. Well, Takagi is at least a better story-teller than Eiji, but Mashiro is far still far behind him in the artwork department. I think that their problem is that they still have a harder time appealing to a mainstream audience with their more niche works. But they have been gradually getting better and better at it.

Really, though, in general I think its about time that they got cut some big break in some area. They have been haven't gotten a big success since the first chapter of PCP debuted. I think their overdue for another big success moment with the next arc (hopefully).

[Spark Of Spirit]

The newest chapter was great. What it means to be the "best", how to make a masterpiece, how to stand out, inspiration... As far as a look into the anatomy of a great story, this was probably one of my favorite chapters. Bakuman is one of my favorite manga because it has chapters like this, something you'd never see in another manga.

[Spark Of Spirit]

This is shaping up to be a very odd arc. I'm not quite sure where it's all going. This obviously isn't a repeat of the "group of people make a manga" arc, but I'm not quite sure what the goal behind this un-shown character is and why does he know the editors so well?

Seems odd, but I'm not so sure this will be a very long arc.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I was thinking that this is probably Nanamine up to another one of his tricks again, since that much seem obvious (though maybe that's just what the author wants you to believe), but I can't really get a read on what his goal is with this current strategy. I'm not even sure how the process works (does he give the old-time authors ideas and have them write the stories or is it the other way around, or a completely different strategy altogether?), yet, but it seems that its intentionally being kept a mystery for the time-being. At the very least its still interesting to try and figure out what's going on with the current story right now.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Now I get Nanamine. Since he was a lonely kid with no friends, he latched on to Ashirogi's manga since they were the only things that seemed different to him. The only problem is that he wasn't inspired by the manga, but ironically by the central quote behind the work (which wasn't meant to be taken seriously, like Light being a "good guy" in Death Note when he was merely the protagonist but a lot of people missed the point) and he's applied that shady lesson to his work.

It's really too bad because he could probably make some great work on his own if he wasn't trying to find a way to make it big through these means.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, his actions certainly make a lot more sense now that we know about his mindset during his youth. I have to wonder why the mangaka picked now to show us this part of his past and didn't delve into it the first time his character was introduced, though.

At any rate, I feel kind of bad for Nanamine since its obvious that somehow his plan will end up going wrong and failing on him, and if that happens I wouldn't be surprised if that causes his father to completely cut him off from any of his money. I think that under all of his plans to come up with ways to produce successful manga that will beat out Ashirogi Muto's series' in popularity, there really does like a genius mangaka with Nanamine. I just don't think that he realizes that he could probably write great material on his own, nor does he want to try actually working and putting in his own effort to write and draw a manga by himself and slowly overtake Ashirogi in publication.

[Spark Of Spirit]

That was an interesting twist in the arc. I'm hoping the next few chapters really add up nicely for PCP, possibly even giving them the coveted #1 position? That would be sweet and quite the build up after all their efforts.

Nanamine's idea feels like a combination of Classroom Of Truth and Money & Intelligence. I'm not sure how well something like that would go over with the Jump audience, but it has a real shot at the top 3.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Reading your earlier stuff and turning earlier stuff into foreshadowing, huh? For some reason this now makes me look at how Oda writes his manga in a different way.

Anyways that's actually something that Ashirogi should have done a long time ago. I'm actually more surprised that it took them this long to come up with that idea. This should really end up being a causing PCP to have a big boost in its popularity. I hope it goes well for them.

Still, while I'm certain that this idea will at least get them within the top 3 in the 11th issue of Jump, I still believe that they won't be able to prevent Nanamine from making that quota as well, even if they manage to beat him out in popularity.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This was a pretty good chapter, though I'm a bit disappointed that Nanamine made the predictable foolish mistake by being too overconfident in his work, once again. I thought he already learned his lesson from the last time that backfired on him, but I guess he's just a naturally cocky person. It was really cool to see Azuma beat him out of the top 3, though. I love it when the villain character gets their comupances in such a twist of irony (being that if Nanamine hadn't fired Azuma, then Azuma wouldn't have come out with a chapter that could beat him).

I do kind of wish that this chapter at least went into how some of the other authors and editors reacted to PCP's stand-alone story, as I always find it to be interesting to see how others perceive those "big-shot" chapters that Ashirogi does whenever the situation calls for it, though I guess in this case it wouldn't stand out as much since pretty much ALL of the other authors who are characters in this story go all-out during situations like this. It was nice to see that PCP made it in 2nd place, though, but once again another one of the characters managed to beat them out for first like usual. It just seems like Ashirogi can never quite make it to that 1st place mark unless they are doing the premiere chapter of a new series. That kind of sucks for them, since they are long overdue for a big hit by now, IMO.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I have a feeling Ashirogi isn't meant to succeed so openly with PCP, that everything they're learning is what is going to make their next manga a superhit. Though the twist about Azuma coming in third was great, and it was nice for Takahama to catch a break of his own since he was clearly killing himself over surpassing the others.

I'm actually hoping to see where this will go next, as it seems like Nanamine might finally be catching on and this arc (which has only been like 8 chapters so far) is most likely coming to a close.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Great chapter this week, but I wonder if having a new editor-in-chief will really effect the authors of Jump in any real way. I do believe that Heishi won't be as hard on Ashirogi as the former editor-in-chief was as he finally admitted to them, but that may work to their disadvantage since they also said that his "special" treatment of them helped push them to become much better as mangaka. Maybe without Heishi giving them that same push, it might actually effect their results a little bit, but then again, we know that Heishi seems to be very in-tune with the previous editor-in-chief, so maybe he'll act similarly to him in regards to how he treats the authors working for Jump.

[Spark Of Spirit]

It was a good chapter, and it was interesting to see the editor-in-chief move on, but what was really interesting is that Eiji pretty much copped Ashirogi's idea before they even wrote it down. This upcoming arc should be interesting.

And damn this manga moves fast. The last arc was literally 10 chapters, and now we're already diving into a new one. I love it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This week we got a really interesting chapter. I love the twist of irony, here: Ashirogi assumes that Eiji is doing another mainstream piece so they shape their story to be as mainstream as possible in order to compete with him, whereas Eiji is doing something that's completely non-mainstream for a shonen manga (though still aiming to be at the top). Interestingly enough, I find Eiji's story idea to be WAY better than Ashirogi's, personally. The story he's coming out with is something that I'd actually like to read if it were real. Something about Ashirogi's idea makes it feel like its a bit too pretentious and I honestly liked it better when it felt more or less like a Death Note clone (with the main character being able to brainwash people instead of kill them with a notebook being the only main difference), whereas when they made it so that there would be a hero of justice to compete with him, it just turned into a mainstream manga which is what they wanted but to me it sounds far too generic for my liking. Maybe if the main character turned from a dark-hero into a villain (like Light Yagami), whereas their hero character turned into a dark/anti-hero (like L), then it would be a more interesting story. But, then again, Death Note exists as a real series in their own Universe, so I guess doing that would be like copying Death Note too much (which would honestly be the case, lol ).

[Spark Of Spirit]

I like what they came up with, because it does seem very naturally them without feeling like a copy of something like Death Note. It might just seem pretentious because they're introducing so many elements at once, but in they would probably pace it out better and make it a good read. There was also a pretty good jab at Nanamine in there that was quite deserved.

I also thought Eiji's sounded pretty interesting, and I'm pretty far from a zombie lover.

It should be cool to see these compete with each other.