I saw the news today oh boy and welcome to my read-through of Bakuman Chapter 144 Company and Winning Strategy in which we get an unexpectedly rich call back, and a smart character is still a dipshit.

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Company and Winning Strategy Summary

Guess Who?

On Monday, November 21st, the first chapter of Panty Flash Fight, and Tournament and School’s one-shot by Arai are released in Issue 51. Shujin is surprised by the quality of both one-shots. Saiko chalks up the impressive artwork to their age and experience.

Shujin finds Panty Flash Fight similar to what they are going for with their next series; T&S is a battle shonen in a school setting, like PCP. If T&S wins votes, it will be a problem for PCP. Kaya confirms that PCP is still better, right?

Shujin hopes so, but PCP will have votes siphoned off regardless.

On November 25th, the results come in and Panty Flash Fight gets first; T&S second with Mikata’s Justice coming in third. PCP dropped to seventh. Saiko doesn’t want to underestimate the vets. Shujin agrees. They have what it takes, apparently.

Shujin is even more upset that Nangoku’s manga Samurai Batter Kill is also good. This could be bad for them all. Kaya worries that the veterans might start overtaking Jump.

Shujin, despondent, agrees with the potential diagnosis. Kaya makes a joke about the declining birth rate (bazinga) but thinks this might be a little extreme.

Shujin gets a phone call from….NANAMINE

Jk. We all knew this.

Nanamine gives them the good ol’ hisashiburi. He is delighted to show the two of them something when they have a moment to spare. Shujin doesn’t understand, but they’ve turned in their final drafts, so they should be good to see whatever it is. A storyboard, maybe?

Nanamine confirms that he put it together after mulling over his past mistakes. Shujin thinks he should show that to Kosugi first. Nanamine wants Ashirogi to see it. He’ll come to them if that’s what needs to be done.

Shujin lets everyone know that Nanamine is on his way. Kaya expresses her disgust. Saiko wonders if Nanamine has learned his lesson. Shujin tries to be optimistic: even they seek input outside their editors from time to time.

The World is All About…

On the drive over, Hibiki has a question for Nanamine: why the interest in Ashirogi?

Nanamine flashes back to his youth, when he was friendless and alone until he read The World is All About Money and Intelligence. He’s floored by the manga and is shocked someone would be so brazen as to try making something like this, and at 15 years old, no less.

Later, Nanamine approaches his father for a favor: he wants money. His father asks how much; as much as his father is willing to give.

Holy shit.

Nanamine has a realization that money is all you need to have friends. You can buy friends with money. The world is fundamentally selfish and self-centered.

He is immediately taken with Muto Ashirogi. He thinks their manga is the truth. The WORLD IS all about money and intelligence.

Fucking. Yikes.

Nanamine arrives at the studio and asks Ashirogi to come downstairs to be picked up. They’re confused, and even more shocked to see Hibiki with him and the nice car.

Nanamine will explain at the office. They’re even more confused as they’re driven over to Nanamine’s business. He’s a manga producer, no big deal.

They boys are shocked by the news, but Nanamine wants to hold off on further information until they get there.

Shinjitsu Corporation

They arrive at Nanamine’s massive office building: Shinjitsu corporation, and Hibiki M.S/M.K. Nanamine explains it was named on a whim, the MS is for manga research institute (Manga Sogo Kenkyujo) and MK is for manga cafe (Manga Kissa). Nanamine thanks and dismisses Hibiki back to his regular duties.

Nanamine confirms that he is Hibiki – a former mangaka (thanks Rusty) – ‘s boss. They boys are stunned as Nanamine offers them a tour of the facilities.

On Floor 4, Nanamine shows them the 16 “Promising Young Creators” who have yet to debut. They have semi-finalists from Jump among other competition winners. They also have three instructors aside from Hibiki who are exceptional mangaka. Although Nanamine won’t kiss and tell, they’ve received almost a dozen requests for storyboards from various artists. Even so, they’ll only accept the best of the best.

Azuma’s Panty Flash Fight exceeded their expectations.

The boys do a spit take a that and ask whether the story was made here. Precisely; Azuma was satisfied with the arrangement.

Nanamine explains their process: an instructor and sixteen students will discuss what type of story will be suitable for each artist. The students then break off into groups of four with an instructor and they’ll brainstorm the best possible storyboard.

The groups are shifted every session to make sure the stories are balanced and fresh.

After they’re done, they all reconvene to discuss the four storyboards they’ve created. The one that receives the highest ranking will be submitted to the monitors downstairs for additional review.

The boys don’t know what those are, and Nanamine offers to show them after he’s shown them a few other things. The sixteen ghost writers are incentivized to produce their best work in a competitive environment, also receiving grades and ranks according to their achievement. There are also lectures on how to improve artwork and will also provide promising artists storyboards for their own debuts.

This is not, however a training school. They are all paid employees of Shinjitsu. If they do well, they’ll receive raises. Like a bonus.

Nanamine admits he came up with this method after doing a lot of soul searching on the failures of his previous method. He decided that his *stupid* idea was that he didn’t give his former readers enough skin in the game. Fifty was too many, and it was unsurprising their enthusiasm waned after time. They were selected randomly.

Oh good, you learned nothing.

The Monitors

Shujin, however, sees the method as “fixed”. With the new system, it’s possible to come up with something great. It’s not only possible, but also already happened.

Panty Flash Fight got first. And, Second place with Arai’s one shot.

However, Nanamine plays fake humble: those are only the early results from the first chapter. They’re not out of the woods yet. Nanamine still remembers his own failures with his one-shot and series and how he was initially successful. That said, Nangoku and Yanagi’s pieces will be good bellwethers for the new system.

The boys are shocked to learn that the other veterans are also part of this (really?). Shujin suspected something but didn’t think it went this deep.

Nanamine espouse a morally grey standpoint: providing veteran artist a second chance with well-crafted suitable stories can create great things beyond what a rookie could hope to accomplish.

He plans to have each one-shot turned into a successful series. But for that to work, he has one additional element that’s as essential as the ghostwriting. He wants guarantees that readers will like the work.

Which is the purpose of monitors: a group of a hundred high school students who come by every day. They’ve been screened with a series of simple tests. The male to female ratio is 7:3 and its designed as a manga cafe where they can read, relax, and have a drink.

Two students comment on a series. Another suggests jumping straight into the classics.

Shujin sees the logic: have someone close to the readers making the determinations. Nanamine confirms that that is accurate. Even though it looks like a cafe, they are also being paid as employees.

If, for example, one comes up with a storyboards, they’ll purchase the storyboard from them. They also fill out surveys. Even without telling them anything, their answers usually align with Jump’s questionnaires outside of the most popular series that get tons of votes because they are so popular.

Cameras (excuse me what) are also installed to see the reactions of each individual reader to take those into account while making the storyboards upstairs. The readers must be “fully” understood to create something truly enjoyable.

Saiko is skeptical and wonders how much money is being poured into this endeavor.

The World is All About Money and Intelligence, right?

Nanamine is excited to hear the thoughts of his favorite mangaka/rivals about his “method”. Isn’t a much better way of doing things?

Saiko sees that Nanamine has learned nothing from his experiences; he’s actually gotten worse. Saiko thought he wanted to become a successful creator.

Shujin thinks as a method for producing hit manga it could work. But it doesn’t make sense as a successful business. Saiko agrees.

Nanamine does agree that they are currently operating at a loss as they are only making profit from the….60% profits from their mangaka’s page fees, royalties, and volume sales.

But if they make a single big hit, they will be made in the shade.

Saiko’s not so confident it will be that easy. Shujin asks where he got the absurd amount of capital to fund this venture. He doesn’t believe anyone in their right mind would bankroll someone so young for something so speculative. Nor could his time at Jump afford this kind of enterprise.

Nanamine deflects: why the obsession with money Ashirogi? How he made his money is of not concern to them. And the place is up and running just fine.

Nanamine thinks it’s an investment in the future of manga and it’s for the betterment of the industry. If he doesn’t make money? It’ll be a charity. But he’ll repay his loans back after he gets his first big hit.

Shujin doesn’t buy that this is a charitable venture. Saiko would understand a rich, successful mangaka doing this but not him. Nanamine’s face switches at that: he will be successful in the long run. He’s just saying that money isn’t the goal here.

Saiko struggles to believe that he’s really doing it for the manga world. If that were the case, why’d he show Ashirogi?

Nanamine’s good cheer evaporates completely. He reminds them of what he said at the holiday party: the next time he will win using a new method. This is the new method.

His only goal is to beat Ashirogi. He doesn’t care about money or the manga world. There’s no way he’ll lose this time. He just wants them to know how they’ll be beaten when all is said and done.

At the end of the day, the World is Truly All About Money and Intelligence, right?

On that note, the chapter concludes.

Company and Winning Strategy Reaction

A Great Callback and an Even Better Moral Dilemma

Okay, when I saw the flashback I pieced together that this chapter – and, to some extent this arc – were supposed to be framed in the context of the boy’s one-shot “The World is All About Money and Intelligence” which isn’t quite the deepest cut, but this is a truly creative use of the callback.

Speaking from personal experience – and I’ve mentioned this previously in this read-through – manga and stories have the capacity to change your entire worldview. Stories are powerful. Because they underline an emotional truth or worldview that might or might not resonate with you.

When I was at a particular low point in my life, around the time I was approaching thirty, overweight, and largely isolated from the world around me, and so distant from an illusion of a dream I had about my future, I came upon My Hero Academia. It was the first anime I had seen in many years.

And I felt like Deku when I was watching it: hopeless and unable to pursue my dreams.

So at the end of the second episode when All Might tells him “Kimi ha Hi-ro ni nareru” “You Can Be a Hero” I wept like deku. Because All Might wasn’t talking to Deku, he was talking to me.

And at that point, I made a concerted effort to pursue my dreams more actively and with gusto. Have I achieved them? Well…

I am preparing to direct my first short film now. It’s getting ready for production and I’m going to drop a donation link soon to all of you, so you may help achieve it. Since it’s about this very topic. Since I am not Nanamine, I need money from people. If you can help, I’d be appreciative.

More news soon. But back to the point I was making.

This is a brilliant way to bring back the idea of how influential stories can be on children – who are eminently impressionable – and how that can unintentionally be ruinous; and the moral responsibility creators might shoulder by bringing a morally ambiguous or downright cynical worldview.

Does that mean we shouldn’t create morally ambiguous, grimdark, or cynical stories? No. That’s dumb. All stories have their place.

But you never know who is going to take these stories at face value and change their life for better or, in the case of Nanamine, infinitely worse.

Seeing that Nanamine took their story seriously also shows the problem of making PCP an anime, so I’m not entirely sure whether it should be because of how Nanamine reacted to their brazen early efforts at a dark style story.

And also, seeing young Nanamine be a lonely miserable rich kid who then used the cheat code of having a rich daddy to buy friends was simultaneously a bit of perfect character development for the little shit – and explains so much of his adult behavior – and also profoundly sad. Because it means to some degree, he didn’t recognize that his behavior was the root source of his loneliness, and not the fact that he just had to buy friends.

It also very easily explains why he’s so married to his method. There is some very subtle character work going on regarding Nanamine’s underlying beliefs about the sincerity of people and how to be use them. That they must be used for him not to be lonely. yadda yaddda. And his basic inability to recognize the value of working hard to achieve one’s goals and risk…failure.

Anyway

Hibiki and the Moral Dilemma

So, another callback with Hibiki. I straight up forgot that Hibiki was the guy who made the copycat manga of Detective Trap and was profiting off the boy’s success who then got cancelled because his storytelling sucked. That’s some brilliant work on Ohba’s part to make the world feel deeper. And it’s a really nice use of layered foreshadowing. Because of course Hibiki would stoop low enough to hitch his wagon to Nanamine’s hare brained scheme.

He’s still basically a cardboard cut out of a character – at least for now – but having him get a face to put to the name is again, a good callback. And it hits my dopamine when I make those little connections.

But yeah, I think this chapter actually did the best job at making Nanamine’s whole premise and idea seem the most reasonable and moral, to the extent that ghostwriting manga is ethical and not morally dubious.

Granted, it was undercut by his philosophy of the world, and also the fact the new swag for his characters design which says “Comic Hustle and an 8 ball” which feels like a pretty hefty dose of foreshadowing if I’m being honest.

But seeing mangaka being trained and prepared and being given manga to read all in service o making good manga actually sounds like…a pretty good idea. Like, it’s dummy expensive and almost needlessly extravagant and let’s be real, runs the risk of JUMPING the shark narratively.

But I give it a pass, because it’s, at the very least, a plausible thing for a stupid rich kid to put a ton of money into on the hopes that they’ll make good manga.

Now, I’m not quite sold that Nanamine actually gives a shit about the mangaka he serves; even though he’s currently only providing his service to the golden oldies, there’s nothing stopping him from soliciting other writers who are desperate for hits. But I also don’t trust him because, I don’t know if I need to actually say this, but I will reiterate my whole spiel.

Dude’s a fucking narcissist and he doesn’t appear to have “learned” anything from his previous mistakes.

Hollowness and Lessons Learned

While I will say this chapter did an excellent job of proposing what amounts to glorified ghostwriting as a reasonable moral endeavor – hey look I’m making all these old manga get their second chance in the sun – and that’s an effective narrative strategy: proposing this is potentially a net social positive.

So, the narrative at least mildly endorses Nanamine’s notion that old people should have a shot to make good work. And it seems like everyone is getting what they want, so to speak: high school kids are paid to read manga; up and comers with promise are being incubated and developed; and old people get the opportunity to have a second shot. And the magazines get good manga.

But as the end of the chapter highlights: Nanamine doesn’t actually care about the good of the manga world. He wants to beat Saiko and Shujin using money and intelligence, but not actual manga.

And there’s the rub: he’s a comic hustler. A con man. And you know what always sounds appealing? A fucking con.

So, on some narrative level, we know that this whole venture – although apparently legitimate – has some sneaking underlying motive that will ultimately lead to the defeat of Ashirogi and Nanamine’s supremacy in the magazine.

What could that mean?

Well, if Nanamine were smart, overrunning the manga with older players and sucking oxygen from the new guard is certainly one way to get effective – if indirect – vengeance on the magazine and the boys. And it would suit his methods. I see this as the most likely.

The next likely is the conflux of new mangaka means Hattori is subbed out by the magazine and the boys gets shifted to someone like, shivers, fucking Miura. I think this is a possibility, although now that we’re getting into the crux of this arc – and it’s still going, thank goodness – I see this one as increasingly unlikely. But it’s still a possibility.

Or a third, unknown option, tied to Eiji’s declaration in the previous chapter about recycling and discarding? Maybe. Again, it’s not clear what Nanamine will do, but it is clear that Nanamine – being a narcissist without scruples – will do something that ultimately undermines the nominally selfless behavior he’s engaging in here.

And since Eiji said something, I assume the old people will have to do with it. Still couldn’t tell you what, though.

however, given that Nanamine wanted the boy’s validation, it’s pretty clear this whole venture is a vanity project.

But let’s actually consider something for a second:

Is Shinjitsu a net positive?

This idea is one of those ideas that *sounds* really good on paper and, if someone was willing to shell out the enormous sums of money necessary to keep it in operation, might actually get some good results out of it.

However, I think we need to consider the idea of unintended consequences. Especially with this idea.

Say it does succeed and they generate hit after hit. What would that mean for traditional mangaka? Are they out of a job? Do they sign up for this to guarantee a hit? Are they really willing to pay over half their income to this machine to churn out good manga?

The 60% fee is absolutely criminal, by the way. What a fucking shitty price point. Especially when the margins for rookies are so small to begin with.

Then there is another issue apropos of current talking points regarding AI: the value of “perfect” art. How do we know that the stuff this company produces won’t be so good that it floods the industry with a monoculture of manga that are all “Good”, but in overloading the industry with “Good” content, art falls by the wayside.

This is sort of like the cinema argument that Martin Scorsese poorly articulated years ago with Marvel: Marvel films are good and broadly appealing which is why, even with the last spate of middling films, they’ve had enormous success.

But they’re also just fine. They don’t encourage deeper thought after they’re done unless you are really struck by one of them. They are designed for maximal enjoyment and spectacle and things that go deeper than that are relegated to those who are fans of the content.

I say that as someone whose life was changed by fucking My Hero Academia. If it strikes you, that is fantastic.

And I actually have called bullshit on the argument Scorsese made when he made it because I think there is a lot of thematic potential with a lot of genre fiction.

But now that I’ve seen enough Marvel films to know the formula, I will admit I’m tired of them.

And I could see something similar happening with this. Not to mention the fact the possibility of bias in favor of a few genres over the wide array of potentially good manga.

SO, it’s one of those ideas that sounds good on paper, but the downstream effects of its implementation would be catastrophic if successfully implemented. And I feel like if the series can do a good job articulating that, we’ll get the inevitable heel turn from Nanamine where he revealed his dickish full hand.

But for now we have to entertain the notion that it is totally above board and designed to be a net good.

Which brings us to the theme that Nanamine violates every time:

Anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new

Nanamine fails to understand the fact that good art is about self-expression, not hitting a series of metrics of enjoyment that everyone agrees upon. I’ve lately become much more focused on art as self-expression rather than just trying to make it good.

It’s a very different feeling when you make art for the sake of expressing yourself rather than for commercial success or long-term success and this is where Nanamine has fundamentally failed to learn anything: he’s a cynic int he worst way. Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

So ultimately, he’s going to lose. But I’m not smart enough to figure out how yet.

I guess we’ll just have to see.

fortunately, the boys are doing the work, and being earnest and honing their voices for their next work, and that should be something to be excited about.

But for now, more Nanamine.

Until next time,

Peace