Bakuman - Episode 16

Now that Azuki has landed her first role as a voice actress, albeit a minor one, Moritaka is more driven than ever to move his own dream forward at a faster pace to match hers. Or is he simply jealous?  It's actually kind of hard to tell early on in this episode of Bakuman.

Anyhow, as Moritaka and Akito work hard towards overcoming their respective issues when it comes to creating mainstream manga, another opportunity presents itself - a chance to enter the Gold Future Cup, another opportunity to be noticed as well as compete against other manga artists into the bargain.  As it just so happens the duo have an ideal mainstream manga concept floating about, so after polishing that off they hand it to Hattori, receiving a decent (yet not exactly mind-blowing) appraisal of the work into the bargain.

However, as per usual things aren't quite that simple, and the duo's work doesn't even manage to make the shortlist for the contest - not that it's all bad news, as those within the Jack offices who looked at the work had plenty of words of encouragement.  Much needed such words are too, with Akito struggling with something of a crisis of confidence as he hits a brick wall of inspiration.  It's this difficulty in writing satisfactory work that makes Akito choose to go it alone for a while over the summer break, looking for a change of pace to inspire him, although it could well be a change which breaks up this duo as Akito's relationship with Miyoshi deepens and Moritaka is presented with a unique opportunity to hone his own skills.

Altogether, this makes for another satisfying episode of Bakuman - much like the work of its stars at present, nothing particular really jumps out at me but its story is solid and progressing in an interesting direction once again, so to be honest I'm happy to simply sit back and see where it wants to go next.  It may not be ground-breaking at the moment, but this series is certainly remaining enjoyable to watch even at this stage in the game.