Bakuman - Episode 10

Although Miyoshi won out in her attempt to claim Akito as her boyfriend, she's already seeing the down-side of this, finding it impossible to drag him away from his manga-creating work for so much as a simple date.  Much like Akito however, this episode's priorities are largely focused upon the boy's continued efforts to become professional manga artists.

This comes primarily via a visit to Hattori to go over the judge's scores from their recent attempt to win a Tezuka prize - a meeting which allows them to visit the editorial department of Shonen Jack magazine itself.  Ignoring the fact that they're a little over-excited at visiting what is practically just another office, within this meeting they learn plenty of important facts about why their work didn't manage to bag an award, largely on account of the lack of a Jack-esque protagonist rather than any issues with Moritaka's art work, much to his relief.  With new fire in Moritaka's belly, their discussion even catches the eye of the magazine's editor, who joins in on the meeting to give his own advice on how they should proceed while also dropping the name of Moritaka's uncle, who he met in his previous position as vice editor of the publication.

From here, we do find a little time to switch our focus to Miyoshi's rack... err, I mean her opinions on Moritaka and Azuki's rather crazy relationship status (which I guess is the kind of thing that Facebook's "It's complicated" description was made for) as she swings by the boy's studio in a desperate attempt to actually spend some time with her boyfriend.  From there, it's back to further meetings with Hattori, where our pair of main character's efforts appear to have taken a turn for the worse before Hattori throws them a particularly exciting and juicy (albeit risky) prospect.  Is this another step closer to serialisation?  It could just be.

So, another week brings another relatively sedate yet rather entertaining instalment of Bakuman, which again seems to have this knack for carrying me along with the excitement of its characters without ever doing anything particularly extraordinary.  I guess it's called living a dream vicariously or something, not that I've even so much as thought "I'd love to be a successful manga writer" in all honesty.  The other good news here is that Miyoshi's part in this episode actually works pretty well - I was worried she'd quickly become an irritation, but her frankness and out-going character add some much-needed comedy value to this instalment in particular, meaning that having her around isn't so bad after all.  In short, yeah - I'm still really enjoying this show.