I did not hit her, I did naht, it is bullshit, I did not hit her, I did Nahhhht, oh Hai reader and welcome to my read-through of Bakuman Chapter 120: The Net and Face in which having and identity is important, as are your characters.

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The Net and Face Summary

Non-Traditional Battle Stories

On August 10th, Issue 35-36 goes on sale with Nerves and the Accompanying Vapor‘s release. Saiko thinks it’s good. Kaya was moved by the last scene. Shujin – playing rule of threes – point out most people preferred Classroom of Truth. But, most still think that it’s a better fit for Jump.

Saiko reminds him that the internet is the internet *looks around and confirms* and that only magazine popularity matters.

Shujin agrees that the story and emotional elements are well done, in addition to the art, so it could do very well. Saiko notices that Nanamine’s stories are all focused on a single idea. When asked, Shujin explains: tell a Lie and get killed; feel nervous and fart. The cool part is how such a simple premise can lead to such intricate story development and how well it’s pulled off.

Shujin mentions the Non-traditional Traditional Battle Manga (TM) and asks Saiko to come up with a character that he thinks is awesome and he’d want to draw in all sorts of cool poses. Don’t have to be human, just need that classic Jump feel.

The idea is to do a non-traditional battle story with a traditional action character like Shotaro Ishinomori’s famous characters: Kamen Rider, Kikaider, Secret Squard Goranger, Transforming Ninja Arashi, Robot Cop et. al. He probably came up with the characters, first, right?

Saiko sees the light and thinks that it would lead to the characters having a life of their own. Like Eiji.

He’s the type of mangaka who goes by intuition and creates without thinking. Shujin thinks they’ll start with characters. Classroom of Truth wasn’t traditionally jump because it lacked Hard Work, Friendship, and Victory.

Not only that, but Nanamine’s characters lack charisma which means…drumroll please: they need to come up with a traditional charismatic character and put them in a non-traditional story. One with anime potential, of course.

Shujin is loathe to admit it, but he thinks following Nanamine’s lead would be a good idea in this case by doing a premise based on a single idea. Saiko comes up with the character and he’ll get the story inspiration from there.

I like where this is headed.

Kaya and Saiko are also pumped by this idea. They need cool characters, cool scenes, and, of course, a cute heroine. Saiko thinks its fun to draw stuff like that.

What You Need for a Meaningful Life

The next day at the Shueisha offices, Miura sees Kosugi’s good mood as a sign that he’s gotten the results for Nanamine’s one-shot. Kosugi’s pleased to have gotten first, although he assumes that it’s partially thanks to the controversy surrounding Classroom. Aida admires the fact that, even though he’d suggest to make the one-shot a comedy, his idea to play it straight was a hit.

Hattori counters, however, that the manga seems like a one-shot type story. Aida shows him the storyboards for serialization that Nanamine has already submitted. It’s also good.

It’s called What You Need For a Meaningful School Life.

Hattori’s surprised by the title change.

He reads it quickly and observes that Nanamine and sees that the setting is good and Nanamine is adept at adapting his work to a serialized structure. Miura’s awed by how fast and perfectly Nanamine rises to the ocasion. It’s beyond genius.

You could say that.

Aida thinks it’s a true once in a decade find; Hattori points out that praise is reserved for people with a hit series already. Miura thinks Kosugi is lucky to have found this guy. Kosugi is more reserved: it’s still only the early results.

Hattori sees similarities to PCP, but notes something is “off” about the writing that he can’t pinpoint.

Meanwhile, over in Yoshidaville, Yamahisa worries about Aoki’s prospects for serialization since Nanamine is also doing a school setting. Yoshida believes that Nanamine will probably place first in the final results. He’s annoyed by the obnoxious titles but thinks it’s “obnoxious in a good way”. The ideas are whimsical and entertaining to read.

Yoshida however declares that Nanamine is totally devoid originality. No uniqueness: a collection of familiar lines and concepts.

Yoshida vows to put a stop to him at the next serialization meeting. Yamahisa is surprised that Yoshida has that kind of pull.

Yoshida plans to try…anyway.

Womp womp.

Trade Secret

On Friday, Kosugi calls to congratulate Nanamine on getting first in the final results. Nanamine feigns enthusiasm…annoyingly but is otherwise as pleased as can be. He lets his committee know the results. They all celebrate his victory and note he won’t be delivering pizzas any longer.

Nanamine butters Kosugi up claiming it was his editorial advice that made him succeed. He asks to the come to the office to hand over chapters two and three this instant.

Kosugi is shocked at his output. Nanamine explains he just wants to be ready for serialization by the deadline of August 28th. He also has ideas to improve the first chapter. Kosugi is disappointed to learn that Nanamine went ahead and made revisions before passing them through him first so the team leader could approve.

When asked how he’s able to make these chapters so quickly Nanamine demurs: trade secret.

Kosugi is immediately concerned by that phrasing and asks to come to over. Nanamine’s surprised but Kosugi explains that it’s normal for editors to come to the artist’s place for editorial meetings; Nanamine currently lives with his parents, right? He’ll need to consider a studio but he’d like to see what Nanamine can do with his present setup.

The chatroom wants to see a livestream to make fun of the “moron” and whip him into shape. Nanamine puts the kibosh on that: too risky . He turns off his computer and will come back on when he’s done.

Nanamine’s concerned by the desire, but keeps up the act. He sets up a meeting for friday. Kosugi will be there in thirty minutes by car. He wants to confirm the time. Nanamine let’s him come as early as he pleases.

Nanamine explains the situation to the chatroom.

The Truth

At Nanamine’s house Kosugi reviews the storyboards. Nanamine wants to know how they are. Kosugi thinks the protagonist is still bland but Nanamine wants that so the reader can identify with him. Kosugi asks why Nanamine revised chapter one despite the fact the Kosugi gave him the okay. He’s understanding about the other two chapters, but wants to know about chapter one specifically.

Nanamine accidentally, or perhaps subconsciously on purpose that not “everyone” was satisfied with the chapter. When asked who “everyone” is, Nanamine doesn’t rationalize or explain it away and offers him to join the “fun”.

He opens his computer and shows Kosugi the chatroom. The chatroom comes alive when Nanamine tells them that Kosugi is there and they greet him enthusiastically.

He explains the setup that 50 people come up with ideas. About half are online at any given time. Late at night, about ten. Kosugi asks whether his stories are original at all?

Nanamine plays dumb: he’s not stealing from other manga, he’s assembling input from a large number of “volunteers”. Kosugi knew something was wrong.

Kosugi points out the obvious danger of this plan: what if one of these volunteers wants money for writing? What if word gets out that he’s doing this?

It’s all been accounted for (yeah, right): he’ll cut those people loose and recruit someone new. They’re all informed of this policy.

Yikes.

As for word getting out, Nanamine sees it as an opportunity for a new era of manga. Nanamine does clarify that one wouldn’t willingly leak this on their own and swears Kosugi to secrecy.

Kosugi asks if he’s good enough for Nanamine. Not at all. Among his group of volunteers are editors and artists with over five years of experience. His experience isn’t even remotely comparable. They came up with chapters two and three on their own entirely. If it gets through serialization, Nanamine expects obedience from Kosugi.

Kosugi is horrified by the idea.

Nanamine clarifies: he’ll just be opinion 51, not a slave or anything.

Kosugi’s furious at being undermined. Nanamine points out that he’s only a first year editor. Kosugi wonders if that’s why Nanamine’s pulling this bullshit.

Nanamine point sout that if he doesn’t get good results in three years he’ll be transferred. Kosugi’s shocked expression is enough to confirm the truth that he found online, which he finds amusing.

Nanamine gives him an offer: let him work as he pleases, which will gaurantee a hit so he can keep his job; if he can’t do that, Nanamine will bounce and draw for another magaizne.

What a shit cunt.

Nanamine also correctly points out he’s become a hot commodity thanks to the Classroom of Truth scandal. Other publishers are nipping at his feet for an opportunity to publish him. It would be horrible for Kosugi’s career if a bright rising star abruptly left under his watch. If anything, this is an incredible opportunity.

Nanamine asks whether they have a deal.

Kosugi is clearly upset, but the stories are good, and the art is great. So he agrees to do it his way.

Nanamine’s psycho switch flips back to happy positive mode and he thanks Kosugi for being such an understanding editor. This will be the start of a great relationship.

Kosugi walks away, totally defeated. Nanamine informs the chat room who are both shocked and pleased that the editor is under their thumb. They make fun of Kosugi for being so pathetic.

Jesus, rage, building.

” I Can’t See His Face”

At Eiji Co., Ltd., (which has become an official name on the residence) Yujiro mentions Nanamine to Eiji as the best new rookie to come along since Eiji. Eiji doesn’t know who that is.

Yujiro’s asked if he read the one-shot by him. Eiji’s comment is merely that the art was really good. Yujiro remembers Eiji didn’t read Classroom of Truth.

Yujiro askes him if the story was any good. Eiji thinks it was. It was like Muto Ashirogi II. Yujiro agrees, but thinks he might be even better than Ashirogi. He thinks Eiji likes that kind of stuff, right? Eiji’s face is uncharacteristically serious.

He thinks it’d be hard to overcome the true Ashirogi, unlike them, he can’t see the creator’s face at all.

When asked what he means by that, Eiji backs down from the cryptic statement to say that he’s never met Banamine. Yujiro takes the literal interpretation at face value.

The next Thursday, Hattori meets with the boys at the studio and he tells them that Nanamine is being considered for serialization. Shujin asks whether Hiramaru and Aoki are also submitting.

Hattori thinks that Hiramaru’s work won’t overlap, but Aoki might be in trouble. PCP, though, will have the biggest competition: the series is filled with internal dialogue, mind games, and is set within a school, as well. The art, too…

Shujin and Saiko don’t want Nanamine beating them: forget a second story if Nanamine gets a series, they’ll be responsible for crushing him with PCP.

Hattori’s shocked face closes the chatper.

The Net and Face Reaction

I wanted it darker

And we are heading into darkness. My call that this is going to be the Death Note-like arc remains untested with the developments of this chapter.

Nanamine was full mask off in the previous chapter, but this chapter has truly metastasized just how nasty he is as a character. Again, I have to give credit to Ohba for creating a pitch perfect narcissistic villain in the way that he has. Nanamine truly hits all the beats of someone who is malignantly narcissistic.

And I’m going to take this moment to remind everyone that not everyone who has narcissistic traits are narcissists with a personality disorder baked into their sense of self. In fact, everyone has narcissism in them to some degree because it’s necessary for our continued survival. It’s an element of human consciousness to have just enough self interest to survive.

But yeah, Nananmine is doing the malignant part VERY WELL.

Which actually makes these last few chapters feel so successfully dark. It’d be one thing if Nanamine were a villain like the previous villains. That is to say, scummy and malicious, but mostly too stupid to be self-aware and actively harm others with malicious intent.

But he is fully aware of what he’s doing and how he’s doing it and i’ve probably harped on this enough. My thoughts that Nanamine are a Light Yagami type character (but even more dumb) have already borne fruit. And now with the manipulation of Kosugi it’s gotten even more clear that Nanamine thinks of himself in that way, at the very least.

Commentary on Internet Culture

Given that this came out in like, 2010, 2011, the internet was already a huge thing, but I have a feeling Ohba and Obata were losing patience with it at this point. To some degree, I wonder how much internet commentators stuck in their craw because the internet is, quite famously, full of obnoxious self-involved windbags who spend their time writing about a series and criticizing it openly, often aggressively, and with little thought as to how much effort goes into making it.

We’ll pretend that I’m not referring to myself a bit, here.

META(NON)FICTION BABY.

And now that I think about it, Ohba is probably taking the piss out of the type of internet commentator who has no skin in the game arguing they could make a manga better than the pros.

I feel kinda dumb now.

In that light, Nanamine is….still a compelling character. Even if it’s a salty response to idiotic internet commentators *looks literally anywhere else but at this own blog* he’s still written with the right amount of melodrama and humanity to make him feel like a real (shitty) character.

And look, I feel weird criticizing things on the internet. I always have. Because I am largely a creator. And for a long time I was a people pleaser so I was afraid to be critical of things. I still am because the industry I want to work in is very much one of relationships and talking smack is a good way to burn bridges.

So I’m very careful with how I criticize this series, even if I could go way more ham. But I’ve also learned that it’s equally unproductive to be unquestioningly praiseworthy, which is why this read-through has given me an opportunity to be balanced and frustrated about the parts that are frustrating, while still saying how much I’ve enjoyed this series.

Coming back to the story, though.

I think the idea that Nanamine is some self-parody of an internet cretin who wants to be Light Yagami to actually be a compelling way to inject some of the darkness of Death Note into Bakuman without actually murdering people or having apple loving shinigami. While its premise could be much darker due to how dark the industry can be at times, within the narrative reality of this story, having this be the way to do it just…I don’t know, fits.

But back to what I was talking about previously.

Poor Kosugi

The whole sequence with Kosugi being manipulated by Nanamine was a genuinely upsetting sequence, and one of the darkest in the series to date. But it was also damnably effective as a tone-setting device for this arc.

Now, as we established, the seeds of Nanamine’s destruction are already manifesting themselves: his inability to maintain his secret, his desire for praise and validation, and also his cruelty.

But he is still very charming, and very good at manipulation. And he knows one thing for damn certain: Kosugi is weak and impressionable.

And therefore he is easy to take advantage of.

I think Ohba also wants to play with anti-jump mentality in Nanamine: instead of hardwork, victory, and friendship, he’s trying to get people subservient to him so he doesn’t have to do any work, and wins anyway.

And seeing Kosugi being broken is about as Anti-Jump as you can get.

And the darkness might not work tonally if it weren’t for the inherent structure of the series. But I’m giving it a pass because of how effectively it illustrates that, as much as Ohba may resist the ideas of Jump’s masthead, he still, on some level, believes in them, and follows them. Because he’s made Nanamine unambiguously a villain in a world full of real people.

Even though Bakuman is very melodramatic and leans into the inherent melodrama of manga, all the characters have real foibles and failings. They don’t feel like caricatures of good and bad. Yoshida and Yamahisa and Miura, despite being irritating for their specific character flaws, still feel like real people who just have character flaws but are also still full, rounded people.

And again, Nanamine is the same. He’s a monster, but he’s got contours and depth.

It’s a real testament to the strength of the writing. Which is also why it’s so terrifying when Kosugi just folds like a mat. Because it could happen. It’s not narratively satisfying to see someone break under pressure, but it does make sense.

It is also, darker.

But there are also other characters. And we must needs discuss them.

The Boys

The Boys didn’t have a whole lot to do this chapter other than react to the previous chapter and come up with their new non-battle battle manga. I liked the bit about Kamen Rider, Kikaider and other famous masked heroes if only because I know the names, but that is not my specific otaku bag, so I can’t comment on it too deeply.

But the point about character is worth reiterating: characters are why you read stuff. It’s a bit of a truism in writing circles that characters are stories. But it’s a truism because it’s…true. And while there are types of stories where the plot is the most important element, if the characters in that plot are boring as fuck, it doesn’t matter much.

And especially in manga’s case, the characters – from soup to nuts – character silhouette to their flaws has to be pristine. Because manga, in many ways is similar to TV in that if you are a certain kind of consumer you come back to it week to week, or every two weeks, or every month, or every two months, or every four months, or every half year.

Or if it’s like Berserk or One Punch Man, whenever the author feels like it.

*Cries in Berserk*

But unlike television which is time locked, comics are not. So you spend as much time with the characters as you want to.

And the additional wrinkle that TV usually doesn’t have is that it is week to week until the series concludes. It’s not structured into seasons like most television.

The cumulative effect of this is that you can get to know and spend time with these characters as a part of your life. You chill with them on a specific day, sometimes you spend more time with them if you’re trying to catch up. It’s much easier to develop a more human attachment to these characters as a result.

So they have to be excellent, memorable, and you have to want to spend time with them. And for manga where the characters are boring as fuck it makes reading the manga an absolute chore.

And to wit, I’ve spent most of this analysis analyzing the compellingness of one single character. So it’s really important.

But I wonder if making their next series a Kamen Rider type character is how they have to go. we’ve established that Shujin does like his limited sci-fi schticks, so I think he can find something that works, but it could be something a little more plot heavy.

I also chuckled that in the margins they had to acknowledge the author who made the characters because Japan has very strict copyright laws.

…..anywho.

The boys are fine, but the editors were more the focus of this chapter.

For Once, Yoshida and I agree

Yeahhhh. There. I said it. You happy?

Prolly not, if you’re the type of reader I think you are.

Yoshida’s observations about Nanamine are interesting in the sense that even though I haven’t read the manga I get the sense that his read is more accurate than the other editors. Its because he’s openly hostile to Nanamine as a threat to Hiramaru which is…weirdly adorable? but he’s probably also more accurate than he realizes.

Yamahisa is also feeling the heat and things just don’t seem good.

Meanwhile, it really does speak to how success can blind us to reality sometimes because it’s pretty clear that Aida, Hattori, and Miura are neglecting some red flags because they may have a genius on their hands.

Fortunately for us, Hattori is Hattori and he has similar level of insight into manga that Eiji does and recognizes that something isn’t right about the work, although he can’t tell what.

But I hope this becomes a broader consensus about the wrongness. I can’t expect Miura to be chill because he’s kinda the worst, except when speaking relative to Nanamine (or Nakai, woof), but I think this con is going to run for a bit.

But, maybe, knowing how this series do, it might just be a few more chapters. We’ll have to see, honestly.

But that brings me to the final person, and the person to wrap up this read-through

Eiji and the Faceless

One thing I haven’t commented on this chapter that is truly expertly done is the theme of facelessness. Or a lack of identity. This manifests most strongly with Eiji’s statement about Nanamine’s lack of a face, but it’s also the wrongness that pervades the other characters observations.

It’s Yoshida’s observations that his work is too cliche; Hattori’s sense of offness. And, obliquely, the boys mention of the fact that they’re interested in a Kamen Rider type story as a potential way forward. That and their comment about the characters lack of charisma.

These are all telling us about Nanamine’s true failure: he lacks an identity of his own.

Even his characters beats are a rip-off of Light Yagami. Nanamine has no identity, which ties to his representation of the interenet’s facelessness. And his chat room.

None of what Nanamine does is sincere, which is why it’s so infuriating, and everyone is kinda picking up on it. Kinda. but not all the way. And it’s only through Nanamine’s hubris that he’ll fall apart because that’s the key to manga: identity.

It’s the key to all good art: having an identtiy of your own, a voice. Owning it and loving it. If you don’t have that, then there really is no point to any of this.

And that’s how he’s going to be defeated.

But we still have a ways to go.

Things are getting darker, and I am excited to see how much darker they get before we see the light.

Until next time,

Peace