Bakuman – 05

Ah here we go – this is more like the Bakuman I wanted to see.  This show is at its best when focusing on Mashiro & Takagi when they’re bouncing ideas off each other and getting all fired up about their manga…..I was getting a bit tired of the meh romance.

I’m glad they didn’t drag the manuscript creation process out any longer than a single episode – there are only so many shots of Takagi & Mashiro scribbling away you can watch before getting bored.  The nitty-gritty of producing a manga is interesting, but I’m much more interested in watching Takagi & Mashiro interact.  Thankfully there was plenty of that this episode since they two of them were holed up in the studio together for the whole summer.  Watching Mashiro & Takagi just hang out is always entertaining – they can be so dorky (Fusion Dance! :lol:), but at the same time they’re so serious about what they’re doing that its impossible not to admire how dedicated they are.

This episode also finally lets us get an idea of how talented Takagi is as a writer; we already know that Mashiro has a talent for art, but Takagi’s writing quality was somewhat up in the air.  However this week shows that he really is good at coming up with interesting concepts.  The sunglasses pitcher story was stupid, but also seemed like it could be a lot of fun – however Takagi seems to be best at sci-fi, and the concept the pair decide to with “The Two Earths” sounds like something I’d actually really be interested in.

Another thing that becomes glaringly obvious this week is that Mashiro is a hardcore perfectionist – worryingly so.  Takagi also pushes himself to produce the best possible name for Mashiro to work from, but the lengths that Mashiro will go to (ie: not eating or sleeping) can’t be healthy. Takagi shows his concern in his own way; he can’t tell Mashiro to stop since they agreed that they wouldn’t interfere in each other’s work, so he tries to make sure Mashiro eats and sets himself the task of learning how to cut & paste screen-tones so he can at least help out a bit.

Takagi also shows a much more vulnerable side this week – he reveals that under all his bravado and bluster, that he was genuinely concerned that Mashiro wouldn’t like the kind of stories he was coming up with.  Takagi is also the one to get all emotional when the pair finally finish their manuscript – he’s definitely the more emotional of the pair, even if Mashiro is the wide-eyed romantic!

 

Speaking of Mashiro’s romantic nature, we find out that Miho & Mashiro have been mooning over each other since grade school – there’s a limit to being shy you know!  Still its sweet how pure Mashiro’s romantic notions are, and its also fecking hilarious when he starts dishing out romance advice to Takagi about Miho’s best friend Kaya (really not liking her anime character design – whats up with that hair!?).  Its fun to see Takagi get flustered since he’s normally so self-assured – but he does get his own back when he teases Mashiro about having Miho come over to ‘encourage’ him…..in a meido outfit.

Really looking forward to next weeks episode as the boys finally take their next major step – showing the fruit of their hard work to an actual Shounen Jump editor.