Monday 28 February 2011

Bakuman - Episode 21

They may have sealed a place in the Golden Future Cup, but there's still no let-up for Ashirogi Muto as they continue their bid to prove to their editor Hattori that they're ready for serialisation.

Despite their fervour and hard work, it does appear that Mashiro is coming close to breaking point as the duo try to create a new chapter for Hattori's perusal every two weeks - a tough deadline that means trivial stuff like sleeping comes second every time.  On top of all that, and as if their nerves about how they will fare in the Golden Future Cup aren't already shredded, they soon find out who their opponents in that particular competition are set to be - a roster including Fukuda, Nakai (albeit as an artists for the actual writer of his entry, the blunt yet pretty Ko Aoki), and one other entrant who we'll come to later.


Regardless of this competition, there's good news ahead for Takagi and Mashiro, as Hattori tells them to stop creating new chapters for their detective story and instead start focusing on getting serialising, with him confident that they can make it into Jack at their current level even if they weren't to win the Golden Future Cup - a thought which brings excitement and relief to our duo, mixed with a steely determination to win that competition anyhow in their quest to surpass Nizuma.  Before all that though, a rather hefty new contender has appeared in the form of rock star turned manga artist Koogy, who sets a rather large cat amongst the pigeons by announcing his own entry at a live concert and thus ensuring a huge amount of cheap publicity for his work... hardly playing fair, according to his Golden Future Cup rivals.

In a way, I'm not really too bothered about this newly introduced rival either way, as I'm actually more interested in just following our main duo's trials and tribulations off their own back - still, I suppose some extra drama won't do the show any harm and it certainly seems to have hit a run of form without getting bogged down too much in its minutiae, so once again I'm happy to just go with Bakuman's flow and see where it takes us next.

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