Bakuman II Episode 13: Fatal Misunderstanding

NOOO, MIYOSHI YOU’VE GOT IT ALL WRONG T_T

Summary

Aoki meets Takagi by chance at the nearby zoo, and realizing that she could help him with ideas for Ashirogi Muto’s next gag manga, the two exchange phone numbers. When Takagi is next called out to the zoo by Aoki, he meets Iwase as well, who proclaims her love for him again and hands him a copy of her debut book.

Back at Ashirogi Muto’s office, Miyoshi is cleaning up when she finds a copy of Iwase’s book lying around, with what looks like a love letter to Takagi from Iwase inside…

Impression

LIES, HE’S NOT ACTUALLY CHEATING ON YOU MIYOSHI

There’s nothing worse than two people that actually love each other caught up in a huge misunderstanding of the situation, and that’s what’s going on in terms of Takagi and Miyoshi now. All along it’s been implied that they’ve had a good relationship and there’s nothing really in their way, but with the re-introduction of Iwase, it looks like it’s about to get hectic, and even more so now that she’s decided to write manga.

I couldn’t help but feel that Iwase put that letter in to try and cause trouble, even though its by pure coincidence that Miyoshi found it before Takagi did. She’s still a really bitchy character anyway (Iwase) and its as spiteful as hell for her to turn to manga not because she loves it, but because she wants to show Takagi up. As far as I know, she can’t draw (hence going into novels, instead of manga) and will need to find an artist to draw for her…hmm, I wonder if there’s a currently unpublished artist lurking around right now that likes pretty girls…cough

Miyoshi was kinda getting suspicious of the fact that Takagi was on the phone for the entire night, multiple nights in a row. You can really tell she loves Takagi despite everything, which makes the misunderstanding all the harder to cope with. In that sense it’s partly Takagi’s fault that he offered to call Aoki, who’s now torn between him and Nakai. What’s more is that Takagi told Aoki the whole love story between Azuki and Mashiro, which, because of its uniqueness can be easily put into a story and become popular, without anyone ever knowing it actually happened IRL o.o Seriously, he’s letting his guard down too much among a rival mangaka. He’s only got himself to blame if Aoki ends up immensely popular because of his idea – even after all this he doesn’t really know how harsh the manga world is.

Okay back to the main story. It’s a good idea for Ashirogi Muto to abandon Ten and go for a new gag series, which has a really interesting premise – inventor hands inventions to his grandson, who gets into trouble and ends up losing the invention after every chapter. That means the manga can go on for as long as Ashirogi wants, since potentially all they need to do is keep thinking up novelty ideas with funny punchlines. As I said before, the strain’s on Takagi now, since it’s his gags and ideas that will keep readers in, where on the other hand Mashiro needs less art quality due to it being a skit manga – and it’ll improve anyway, since he’s drawing the same characters over and over.

With all that said, this is probably the worst time for Iwase to show up in front of him. Seriously, he won’t be in a very funny mood if he has this huge relationship problem.