What’s up buttercup? and welcome to my read-through of Bakuman Chapter 122: Mind Games and Catchphrases, in which pride goeth before a fall and [redacted] makes me nervous.

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Mind Games and Catchphrases Summary

Let the Battle Commence!

Picking up directly from the last chapter, Shujin vows to get Nanamine cancelled before ten chapters is done. Nanamine taunts him: it’s premature to make that claim and PCP has only been in serialization for a year. PCP will be over by the time they’re done.

Shujin thinks that this conversation is puerile and stupid. Nanamine agrees: let the results do the talking.

Shujin hangs up.

Shujin apologizes to Hattori for his fit of pique; they couldn’t help themselves. Hattori understands, but thinks that Nanamine’s plan will backfire on him. He also thinks it’s entirely unprofessional and has no wish to see it succeed. He also thinks that if Nanamine’s committed even after that tough love speech they gave him, it’s their job to whip his ass.

Or something to that effect.

Hattori will work with Kosugi to try and divert Nanamine from this path but he thinks, ultimately, that using PCP to beat him down is a reasonable route to go. That said, if things get too out of hand, he’ll step in immediately.

Gotta love a co-conspirator.

That said, Nanamine’s a real threat. The storyboards are good, at first glance, at least.

Hattori shows them that despite their apparent quality, they’re too ambitious: there’s too many ideas and his characters/plotlines don’t gel with each other. Too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the broth.

Saiko sees the light: because he wants to cover so much he’s shooting himself in the foot by losing focus on the most important thing.

Hattori’s still cautious: it’s still good despite that, and it’s novel because of its flaws. It’s not an actual problem, as a result.

Saiko, a little shaken, stops Hattori there; it won’t be fair if they know what Nanamine’s story is. Hattori wasn’t going to go into detail.

Shujin sees a flaw in Nanamine’s plan: if it resembles PCP so much, it will be easier to defeat head on. He also won’t change style immediately as that would be admitting defeat. But Saiko thinks it’s still possible he’ll find a novel way to hit PCP even harder.

Shujin entertains the idea as possible, if nothing else. They wonder though if that would make his story worse.

Shujin breaks the fourth wall: They got mindgames going on between the manga and THEMSELVES.

DUN DUN DUN.

Shujin thinks it’s possible that he’d alter the story to become more like PCP. Saiko thinks it unlikely they’ll beat him on release day given the 50 pages and a color lead for the magazine.

Shujin’s more ambitious: they need to go out with guns a blazing immediately. Aim high to take him out soon. Saiko agrees, but they don’t have a plan of action.

The two sit and think. And sit and think some more until they agree to make PCP better than ever.

(Lol).

They have to outdo themselves. Make it sharp and focused. They’ll crush him no matter what.

Defections

At Nanamine’s, he’s in the chat room and the others get excited about the upcoming battle with Ashirogi.

One user, kk34 decides to peace out. When asked why, they explain they’re not here to pick fights with veteran mangaka and they just wanted to tell a good story.

Another user, nanaco, also leaves.

The rest of the chat room is dismissive and makes fun of them – as chatrooms do – but Nanamine is shook. For a moment, before reminding himself he still has 48 willing soldiers in his cause.

Nanamine asks his army: what’s the plan of action?

Most users agrees to ape PCP as much as possible without being a total ripoff. The debate goes on and on Nanamine responding to everything.

ta1, an ex-editor lets them know that they should hold off until Chapter 2 to start the real battle; as a former editor, he knows that Ashirogi is going to aim for Chapter 2 to take nanamine down. LL, another commenter agrees they’ll have something up their sleeve. Nanamine decides to let the real fight happen in chapter 2.

Nanamine also points out that Chapter 2 is when your series really hits the ground running and decides your fate.

The role of an editor

At the Jump offices, near the end of the day, Hattori catches Kosugi still working on extra pages. he’s still got a mountain of work even though he got a new series. Yamahisa asks about Yoshida’s status; he’s on the couch napping.

Hattori lets Kosugi know that he knows about what Kosugi knows about Nanamine’s shenanigans.

Words. I have them.

The two discuss and Hattori wants to know if Kosugi is okay with it. He isn’t. Hattori’s relieved but plans to do nothing about this information as it’s considered poor taste to interfere with other editor’s and artist’s relationships. Editors join this job knowing what it entails and it’s their responsibility to manage their working relationship with the mangaka.

Kosugi is bugged by something: a good editor doens’t need to know how to make manga, right?

Of course not. It doesn’t hurt but the artist should know how to do that. Hattori asks what the most important thing about being an editor is to Kosugi.

The right eyes for manga: knowing good from bad, knowing why a story works and why it doesn’t. He’s upset because he studied hard to be good at judging manga with a critical eye. He wants to help an mangaka create something amazing. But for Nanamine he’s not even worth a second opinion. It’s personal to him.

Hattori tells him to have faith. He hasn’t done anything wrong and Nanamine’s arrogance is a failure on his part, not Kosugi’s. Hattori’s advice is to not write him off as totally lost, just yet. He’s talented. Give him a shot.

Hattori wishes him good luck and tells Kosugi to help Nanamine see the light. Kosugi promsies to do so.

HIjinks with Hiramaru

At the same time, Yoshida’s woken up from his nap with a request. Yamahisa wants Hiramaru as an assistant on God Given. Yamahisa’s desperate for help.

Yoshida dials him up and receives an ominous answering mahcine message threatning suicide and Yoshida bounds toa ction. For once, acting like an almost decent person.

At Hiramaru’s apartment he bangs the door violently hoping Hiramaru hasn’t done the worst. Even calling him his “little hiramaru” (yikes). He begs Hiramaru not to off himself while Hiramaru drinks his sorrow away, recognizing Yoshida’s voice.

Yoshida asks him to stop the process of committing suicide and open the door. Hiramaru is mourning the end of his relationship with “Yukorin” and has to be reminded that she’s “Yuritan”.

Oyyyyy.

Hiramaru gives him the news: Aoki asked for Hiramaru to work as her assistant directly. While Aoki – adorably and maturely – doesn’t want to wound Hiramaru’s pride and ego, she would like him to help sooner rather than later.

The door opens to Hiramaru all swagged out in a suit. Becoming his bishojo self.

He completely changes his tune. He’s happy to help his beloved Yuritan. He hurries off to her place immediately.

Oyyyy. Yoshida is pissed and befuddled, and thinks this *gasp* might be a bad idea, but he also doesn’t want Hiramaru to actually kill himself.

He yells after Hiramaru and reminds him taht Aoki’s asistants are all women and he’s just going to be helping this one time.

Hiramaru, missing the actual message thinks of it as his very own harem.

Sigh. Dammit Hiramaru.

Yoshida chews him out for that line of thinking and promises to throw him out if he does anything awful.

Advice Rejected

Next Monday, Nanamine lets Kosugi know that his storyboards for Chapters two and three are ready for review. . Kosugi is concerned about even more changes but he will come to take a look. Nanamine has a new apartment where they will meet.

Kosugi looks at the new place, which is obviously high class and rings Nanamine.

Nanamine, ever the narcissist, has already bought a very fancy studio for his new series despite not being published. Kosugi makes the observation, too and Nanamine explains his assistants have other jobs to attend to. He anticipates up to eight assistants here at once. He’s gonna need a big enough place.

Jesus, the cockiness of this guy.

Nanamine shows him the assistant’s space, which is massive. Nanamine has his own private part to the studio where he’ll be “working”.

Kosugi reviews the storyboards and Nanamine solicits his input. Kosugi – referred to as No. 51 thinks the story is packed too tight.

Nanamine rejects his notes and takes the storyboards back.

Kosugi is distraught as he is dismissed by Nanamine who decides to start working on the inks.

Meanwhile, at Aoki’s studio, the other assistants ask about Hiramaru’s relationship status with Aoki. He’s surprised to learn they think he’s her boyfriend. They mention that she didn’t frame in that way, but said that he’s a special guy to her, she trusts him, and then she blushed.

So adorable.

The two ask Hiramaru what she likes about Aoki.

Hiramaru’s answer is terrible: her face.

Jesus.

The two girls have a similar reaction but Hiramaru is too in his romantic cups and goes on about wanting a younger girlfriend.

….uh oh.

The black haired assistant warns him not to say that to her face; he needs to praise her inner beauty or qualities about her like her intelligence or modesty.

Hiramaru takes notes about all of this…on the draft of the manga.

Jesus.

Aoki walks in with tea and gently scolds the ladies (Hiramaru included) to focus on working, please. They apologize, Hiramaru even calling her sensei.

Progress!

Yeesh.

At the studio, Kaya is surprised to learn about the stockpile of story ideas Shujin has been saving for PCP. Shujin explains that they’re just basic plotlines, not chapters or anything. Saiko finds the one he’s looking for: the proposal plan. Shujin’s also a fan of that one but he was hoping to run that one when they’re in middle school.

Saiko thinks it could be reworked to a confession instead of proposal while Kaya takes a look. Shujin snatches it out of her hands and admits that while a simple love confession is ruining its potential, they have to bring the big guns quickly.

Saiko thinks they should run it in issue 45.

Shujin disagrees: that’ll be Nanamine’s first chapter and this love confession arc is four chapters with the third chapter as the climax. They should attack him with that confession on Issue 45.

Ba bam.

Saiko then has an idea: hit him where it hurts: the second chapter. Falling straight into Nanamine’s trap. Shujin agrees about the “all important second chapter”.

Saiko name checks his uncle and Eiji. Any of the mangaka they’ve worked with would be disgusted by this behavior. Any victory would be meaningless. Saiko points out that while hitting his first chapter would be a damaging opening salvo, hitting thte second chapter would do much more damage by siphoning off votes.

They decide to put their climax up against his second chapter. Shujin’s equally pleased by the fact that he’ll have an extra week to work on the chapter. Saiko agres that’s good, but gets cold feet a bit since the deadline is so tight, he considres focusing on teh current arc instead. Shujin, however, is gungho about this new tack. They should go all out!

A Secret Weapon

On September 18, Nanamine let’s Kosugi know that he’s finished chapter one’s final draft and it’s ready for pickup. Kosugi’s confused: there’s plenty of time until the deadline. Nanamine explains he’s got extra page until chapter three so Kosugi just needs to come over and get the chapter.

Kosugi decides to come over at 7 o’clock.

Kosugi reviews the final chapter and Nanamine looks to confirm his own self belief by asking how much better it is than Ashirogi.

It isn’t. The 51st opinion has spoken.

Nanamine asks what he means.

Kosugi thinks that Nanamine’s personal abilities are lacking; Nanamine – in true form – thinks he’s getting a passive aggressive dig at how he generates ideas from 50 people. He’s not looking for a “moral judgement” just an assessment of the manga.

Must. Be. Calm. Save. Rage. For. Reaction.

Kosugi is talking about the manga specifically the art. He explains that Ashirogi is, objectively, the better artists. While they are on even footing in terms of figures, Ashirogi has him beat in backgrounds: Nanamine’s perspective is skewed and the balance is off as a result. Not only that, but becuase he’s not great at backgrounds he can’t instruct his assistants to do it well either.

Nanamine, surprisingly, agrees, but thinks it’s not a lack of talent that is the issue. It’s an issue of hiring random talent to be his assistants. Nanamine “wasn’t holding back” on chapter one, he’s just saving a secret weapon for chapter two, which is where the real battle will begin. The group has agreed that chapter two is where the heat needs to be turned up. Kosugi wonders what that means.

The chat room went on a man-hunt and they chased rumors about a certain individual. A super assistant. He’s in the studio with a few others. Would Kosugi like to see him?

…oh no.

Kosugi decides to take the finished chapter without learning more about he conspiracy. He wishes Nanamine luck on the next chapter while Nanamine effusively praises the “mystery” assistant for his skill of being able to draw without reference.

The “mystery” assistant brags that he can draw any place from any angle without looking at reference. he’s the fastest around when it comes to effect lines, shade-flashes, and tone-flashes.

Nanamine has nothing but respect for this “mystery” assistant as Kosugi walks away, defeated and the chapter concludes.

Mind Games and Catch Phrases Reaction

Oyyyy

I have a feeling I know who the “mystery assistant” is (we all know, but let’s pretend, for the moment that we don’t) and we’re going to conspicuously avoid talking about it for now because I need to keep my lunch down for the time being. But hey, maybe it’s a random character we’ve never met before.

Right?

Right?

Right?

Anyway, this chapter was fucking dummy thicc with stuff happening and I’m not super thrilled about it because it was an absolute unit to summarize effectively.

But yeah, we’re off to the races and we’re still…prepping for the battle, sort of.

One of the things about non-battle battle manga is that unlike a traditional battle story where you can jump into the battle all will-nilly and have punches thrown and stuff, in a battle of wits, half the battle is talking about the battle at hand. And you would think that Bakuman would suffer for the fact that the “battle” sequences all functionally occur offscreen – except for some obvious excellent examples like Chapter 116 – but you would be wrong because in the case of this story, the manga are just attacks, and the actual battling is react and prepare for the next volley.

It’s sort of like Pokemon where it’s a turn based battling system. Except with wits.

So in that regard, the battle has started, but I’m still kind of annoyed that we haven’t dealt any damage to Nanamine yet because he is getting more and more obnoxious with each passing moment. And I’m pretty confident that is entirely by design.

Like, Nanamine was singularly made to annoy the piss out of me with his behavior specifically. Ohba knew that, I, Eric Koenig, would one day read this chapter by chapter over the course of several years, knew all of my quirks, and would decide to tailor make the single most frustrating collection of character traits purely to annoy me.

…hmmm.

But honestly, all the things I don’t like about people can be found in Nanamine. But let’s divert to the double edged swords that continue to foreshadow his downfall.

The New Studio

So I actually really love that one of the ways we’re clued into the “Pride Goeth before a Fall” narrative is that Nanamine is going all in by spending a shit ton of money for a huge studio on the belief that his series is so good it will justify the expense.

That is a rookie mistake. I have made similar mistakes in the past, and paid for it, so I know from experience that this is always a bad idea.

You invest in some big re-investment when you have proof that it is successful. Not before.

And even though you would think that this is kind of obvious advice, a lot of people do not follow it. You keep costs low until you hit the point where you can justify the increased expense. And even then, you want to hold off on it as long as possible because if you increase your liabilities you HAVE to be successful in order to maintain it which means you create an exponential growth spiral that will eventually sink you….

Welcome to capitalism.

But my point is, Nanamine has only released ONE chapter and this dumb motherfucker thinks that justifies a studio with EIGHT part time assistants, which is fucking absurd. The dude doesn’t seem to realize that he’s on the hook for all of that, or doesn’t understand how debt actually works.

This consistent character habit of not thinking things through because pride is a great touch and really sells the shittiness of Nanamine in particular, but what actually sold for me his inevitable downfall was the second thing, and one we mentioned last chapter.

Opinion 51

Just like Nanamine, this arc is going all in on the editor/mangaka relationship and how central it is to a mangaka’s growth. I actually love why Kosugi wants to be an editor because it’s a genuinely good point and one a lot of artists – even successful ones – can struggle with: non-artists usually make valuable contributions because they can feel it out and don’t know what goes into it.

There is a great video with Prince’s studio engineer Susan Rogers and she discusses this dichotomy flawlessly: there are people who love music who have no desire to make it but want to be involved with it. These people often become critics or work adjacent to the production to the music in various ways.

One of the things that these non-musical musicians are good at is identifying what works about a song and what doesn’t. As someone who is very musically inclined, it never occurred to me that one could just love music and have no desire to make it oneself. I’m telling on myself a bit here because every art I’ve ever fallen in love with I’ve wanted to try my hand at.

But OBVIOUSLY there are people who love different types of art – to the point of obsession – who have no interest in producing it themselves. And they develop their own opinions and thoughts on it, and can usually tell when it’s good or not.

So Kosugi is absolutely right: the real value of an editor is that they are devoted to manga but have no skin in the game as to making it and so can identify the problems and weaknesses of a story. And can point it out to the creator who is too in the world of creation to necessarily notice.

It’s the vital component of this relationship.

But to bring it back to Nanamine, this is the real reason he will fail. He is willing to take advice from experts – the editor in his chatroom who gave him advice re: Chapter two is a good example – but Nanamine can’t take advice that would question his ego or abilities. In other words, he can’t take notes, period.

It’s very telling that he thinks Kosugi is making a moral judgment about his manga rather than pointing out the parts that are trash: in his mind he can’t believe that there would be anyway he could make something terrible. It genuinely does not compute. And by all accounts everyone sees problems with his work already; they’re just not turned off by them.

Just like dating, those red flags will become bigger problems as they don’t get addressed. And because Nanamine is taking things personally he’s only going to react worse when people don’t like his work.

And it’s only Kosugi now, but I could definitely see other people not liking it, as we can already see with…

Defections

The defections are part of a cluster of narrative tropes I love when pride goeth before a fall narratives get kicked into high gear.

As it will no doubt surprise you to learn, I obsess over story to a comical degree – a bit like an editor – and there are a series of tropes that Bakuman is leaning into when a character is too proud and goes forward toward inevitable ruin because they don’t stop to listen to the people around them. And the design of this narrative is a bit like a receding shore.

As soon as one thing goes wrong it presages other things going wrong. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

The fact that Nanamine has changed the nature of their manga to a battle with Ashirogi is already ruffling feathers and people leaving the chat – and his reaction to it – are classic tropes of his fall in action. It’s very satsifying narratively because it confirms for us our own beliefs about pride.

But also it speaks to how much of a shortsighted fool Nanamine truly is. He can’t see past his own feelings and he’s constantly reacting to life instead of trudging on with his own vision. It’s destined to fail.

And this manifests in how he deals with these things. he doesn’t take a second and ask if maybe he’s wrong, he just assumes he’s right and the other person is wrong.

He also doesn’t see a failure as something to address within himself, but rather an external issue to cover up. And that includes hiring a new assistant who they scoured to find.

I’m not going to talk about it. I don’t want to be reminded that I’m right. I don’t want to. So I Won’t!

Taking a play from Nanamine’s books. Jesus.

But there were other things in this chapter aside from Nanamine that we need to talk about like…

Hiramaru and The Boys

Jesus, I keep consigning them to the end but the boys are in battle mode and they’re only useful in the context of the battle. Fortunately for us, there is nothing to develop on their end (right now). They are using their hard won skills in manga to take Nanamine to task and Nanamine is lucky because he has an editor to point out the small rules and mores that you only learn on the job as you do it.

The Chapter two gambit was a nifty bit of inside baseball because you wouldn’t think about it logically if you were an average consumer but for the mangaka who have been around the block it’s actually quite telling that they have to know about the rise and fall of these certain parts of life. These rules that can’t be written because they aren’t official, but have the same ability to impact you.

Anyway, that and the need to make PCP better – in an ambiguous way – and the stockpile of chapters they have saved up – and to a degree how mangaka will sometime schedule out their series based on what’s going on their lives, there wasn’t much that they were doing in a way that was super narratively interesting (relatively) so let’s talk a bit about Hiramaru.

So Hiramaru is in many ways a tragic figure here. But he’s also a total goofass who sometimes earns his shitty treatment. And while his work at Aoki’s apartment was far from the most egregious example of bad things, I wasn’t super amused by the fact that this interest in Aoki is so superficial (young and pretty).

Now, don’t get me wrong, Hiramaru is a fundamentally silly character whose whole schtick is being problematic on the whole, but even by that metric it was pretty hard to stomach how he was so casual about how little he values Aoki as a person.

And I know I don’t have to mention it, but while being attracted is, in fact, a very important thing to be towards a potential partner (don’t be desperate or pursue someone you’re not attracted to on the off chance their personality might save them, that’s not helping either of you), also like them for who they are as a person.

Aoki has many respectable traits and I get that Hiramaru doesn’t know much about her because they have difficult jobs and he’s socially awkward and a pessimistic weirdo.

But man, hearing him dropping those traits to the other assistants was hard to stomach. Especially because he had that epic moment of treating Aoki like a real human being a few chapters ago. I was sincerely hoping we’d keep that up. Though I will say the fact that he was taking notes from Aoki’s assistants was in fact, majorly cute, and that he called her sensei and respected her as the head was also very nice.

I’m probably overthinking this.

Blegh. I guess character consistency is important. But it’s grating again. Sigh. Also Yoshida engineering Hiramaru’s potential suicide. This comical bit remains such a complicated mix of amusing and deeply deeply troubling, man.

So should I talk about that?

Nanamine’s Redemption and the Assistant

Alright, so this is mentioned briefly by Kosugi and this is getting lonnngggg, so I’ll probably try to end around here. But the series is toying with the idea of redeeming Nanamine and I am…very ambivalent about the idea.

While it’s definitely something a Jump manga would do, part of me hopes this series is a bit more cutthroat because people like this usually don’t change because it’s not possible for them to change. From the guy who says everyone is capable of change, this is one of my most regrettable admissions: some people are incapable of change. Not because they are mechanically incapable of it – on a base level everyone can do it – but because to do so would violate their sense of self so deeply, it’s functionally impossible.

And Nanamine is showing all those characteristics. Will the series actually save him? I hope not because that would be more just. But I’m starting to fear that they might try.

And as for that other person. Who shall remain nameless, I have a feeling we’ll know who they are sooner, rather than later.

Part of me thought they would return at the end of the series jacked, and fulfilled, and that’s why they would ultimately end up dating Aoki. I was so happy when Hiramaru asked her out because it meant that probably wouldn’t happen and it wouldn’t be this creepy stockholm syndrome-y bullshit.

But what I forgot is that that guy is definitely coming back, by my own prediction, and I don’t know if being out in the boonies has made him better or worse.

And I’m really scared to find out.

But that will have to wait until a later chapter.

Until next time,

Peace