Sunday 16 December 2012

Bakuman Season 3 - Episode 10

The circle of life as it pertains to manga artists rolls around again in this tenth episode of Bakuman's third season - in other words, it's time for the serialisation meeting!

While this means the end of the road for Shiratori and a disappointment for Hiramaru's new manga, the news is far better for Aoki and (you guessed it) Nanamine as they both find themselves serialised.  Given editor Kosugi's reaction to the news, Hattori is quick to guess that something is up when coupled with Mashiro and Takagi's reaction previously, but although Kosugi refuses to say anything he isn't going to give up on learning the truth and thus goes to the artists in his charge themselves to find out the story.


Suffice to say, Hattori is as repulsed and disappointed with everyone else once he finds out about Nanamine's "croud-sourced" manga, but somehow he too manages to be persuaded not to go to his higher-ups and instead let Ashirogi Muto fight "toe-to-toe" with Nanamine - a very personal head-to-head battle given the similarities between the two series.  With their rival already losing a couple of members of his team while Takagi puts his back into creating a story to match and better their new rival, could the disadvantages of Nanamine's approach be stacking up?  Either way, it seems that he's found a new "secret weapon" which he believes will give him an upper hand in terms of the art style of his work.

Thanks to Nanamine's interesting way of doing things and his detestable, easy to hate character, this continues to be perhaps the best arc Bakuman has delivered at any point - an old-fashioned "good versus evil" story, but one that is no less gripping for that fact.  With cracks appearing in one part of Nanamine's armour while others are strengthened, we seem to be well set up for some great stuff just around the corner, and provided you can compartmentalise Hattori's strange decision not to go straight to his superiors about Namamine's behaviour (thus risking the reputation of the magazine as a whole were word to leak out) there should be some fun times ahead.

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