Bakuman - Episode 13

Much as Azuki's parting words at the end of the last episode looked set to draw a line under the romantic aspect of things with Moritaka somewhat, needless to say this side of Bakuman's story isn't forgotten completely as we hit episode thirteen of the series.

Thankfully, this does actually mean some quite significant progress for this aspect of the show, as Morikata finally sends Miho her e-mail address, albeit only under duress from Miyoshi and after finally polishing off their debut work for Jack NEXT.  Of course, Mashiro being who he is, his first e-mail to Azkui ends up being a huge and rambling chunk of text which receives a rapid (and amusing) TL;DR response from Miho, who seems to be the queen of the short yet cute e-mail judging by their electronic conversations from this point forth.

With that hurdle out of the way, we can concentrate once again on Moritaka and Akito's attempts to break into the manga industry, as they submit their piece for NEXT and get some extremely promising feedback from the magazine's initial questionnaire results, only to be denied at the last as the "real deal" results sees their début work pushed down to third place.  While this would be great news for most aspiring mangaka, it's a huge blow to Moritaka in particular, who rips up the name that the duo had created to continue their "Money and Intelligence" story in the assumption they'd win this round against Eiji Nizuma and swears to create a more mainstream work that will grab them more fans than their first offering.  Will this approach work given its prior failure?  Well, that's what the rest of the series is for, I guess.

As has been the case throughout much of this series, Bakuman really shows its stuff when it comes to the closest it has to a cliff-hanger moment, as you suddenly find yourself on the edge of your seat for a brief moment prior to an important announcement (the questionnaire results in this case) amidst the realisation that you actually care what's going on here.  That aside, watching the manga creation process is as oddly compelling as ever, while moving Miho and Moritaka's relationship onto a virtual plain thanks to her moving is probably only going to be benefit both the viewer and the story-telling process in the long run.  In short, and as someone who hasn't read the manga, I'm still finding this show entertaining to watch as it hits its half-way mark.