Summary
After hearing that Iwase will be submitting a storyboard to the same serialization committee as Tanto, Ashirogi Muto get even more fired up and rework the entirety of Tanto to make it even better. After some uproar at the committee about Niizuma drawing two manga for Jack, Miura tells Mashiro and Takagi that the two serializations going forward are Tanto and +Natural. When Team Fukuda invites Iwase round to discuss their manga, she leaves immediately, saying that she doesn’t need opinions from other authors about her work.
Impression
The title, of course is referring to both Ashirogi and Iwase getting serialized this time round, as well as Niizuma being revealed to be drawing two manga for Jack. See what I did thar?
I can understand why everyone in the Jack editing department started raging at Yoshida, Aida and the other higher-ups about allowing Niizuma to draw two series, since it would certainly limit the success that potential newbies can have with a popular magazine like Jack. Moneys –> Maniizu –> Niizuma. Well played, Hattoris. Well played.
You can’t really count Iwase as a newbie, since she’s delved into writing literature as a pro before, and all she’s doing is the story since Niizuma is drawing the art. Also her intense love/hate for Takagi just pushes her on even more, and I found it quite opportunist for people like the Hattoris to try and use that to make a great manga. Which I’m sure +Natural is, since from what we saw of it, it really did sound pretty exciting.
So after their second try, it’s good that Tanto’s finally been serialized, and on Christmas Day for them as well. While I’m sure it’ll be able to sustain themselves, I have this feeling that +Natural will easily be able to overtake it, purely because of its plot and general shounen-like qualities. Miura did say that gag series stick around for longer, but end up stabilizing in the early double digits and is usually far from the competition up at the top. I guess Iwase will be able to keep her pride as well as her bitchy gloating, especially with a strong artist like Niizuma.
With this, Miyoshi and Takagi can finally get married! Kinda overtaken Mashiro and Azuki there, but the only obstacle left is for Takagi to meet her parents, which may prove to be more difficult than you would imagine. I don’t think it’ll go as smoothly as expected, especially since the track record of this show tends to love plot twists to mess things up just when they start to calm down a bit.
On a side note, poor Hiramaru. He’s got it really tough, but I have this feeling he knows Yoshida’s only trying to motivate him, and just playing along. Fukuda managed to steal away his chance to get closer to Aoki though, but I doubt he’s aware of it (or even cares, LOL).
