「10と2」 (10 to 2)
“10 and 2”

Hattori.. I always knew you were a good guy! Before this episode, I thought of Hattori as someone who saw talent in Mashiro and Takagi. Where I was wrong was that Hattori seems to also care deeply about our duo as well! If you remember Mashiro questioning himself about Hattori’s quality as a editor, for some reason that thought got stuck in my head. Every time the show brought out Hattori, I was always thinking in the back of my head “what kind of person is he really?” I’m glad to say that he looks like a truly honest person and a good editor too boot. As most of the episode focused on the feedback that our duo’s manuscript received, it looks like Shounen Jack has some pretty interesting ways of judging things for competitions. Between the editors and mangakas who rate the submissions, its too bad the editors’ votes are what count the most. If it wasn’t for that, our duo might have actually got closer to winning! While it was nice to hear that Mashiro’s art work wasn’t as bad as the contest portrayed it, it still looks like our duo hasn’t found that “niche” for their work. From having a protagonist that doesn’t fit the style of jack to their story being too mature or having too much depth for jack, it looks like they’ll never catch a break. After so many flops, it amazes me that our duo still have the endurance to keep pumping out names and manuscripts. What really caught my eye was just how much support they have at Jack already. Starting with Hattori, it really surprised me after seeing how much effort he put into helping our duo. After his first idea of trying to become more “jack” like failed, his sudden personality change made him stand out as a great editor. Looking worse than Mashiro did back when he was finishing his first manuscript, his idea of risking everything on a all-or-nothing gamble seems like the perfect way for our duo to beat the competition. Focusing not on becoming more “Jack” life but on Takagi and Mashiro’s own skills, they opt to work on a name called “Money and Intelligence Make the World go Round”. While the name itself sounds kind of corny, I’m really rooting for this to be the manuscript that finally gets our duo some well deserved attention.

What’s even better was the reinforcement that came from the editor-in-chief Sasaki Hisashi. After passing on some touching words from Taro Kawaguchi, who he seems to have been very close too, everything he said from then on started to resonate louder and louder. Giving words of encouragement to our duo, it looks like he might see some potential in them as well. This is the same editor-in-chief who went to grab Nizuma to write for Jack – which brings up a fairly interesting question. I wonder if Sasaki favors our duo over Nizuma, especially since he went to the effort of telling them that Nizuma may never become the number one writer at Jack due to the immaturity in his writing.

While I’m glad that this episode focused a lot more on the technical side of things, it’s always nice to watch Takagi get knocked around by Kaya. Early on she already started showing her cute side with the whole back and forth between her new “boyfriend”. Besides that, did anyone else find this pose cute? While it looks like Takagi didn’t, I know I did! Besides the extra screen time Kaya got this episode, I wish I could physically speak to Takagi. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I know that I would never expect any girlfriend to understand the words “not enough time” and “for you” in the same sentence. As my suspicions were half confirmed, it looks like Takagi is going to have a handful trying to balance his manga work and girlfriend together. I say half because with Kaya helping our duo by bringing them food as they work, it looks like she may actually follow through on what she said last week – supporting her boyfriend as he tries to become a mangaka! Plus who can ignore Kaya when she’s acting so cute? Going off of next week’s episode title, it looks like it’s the month of love and chocolate! Hopefully Mashiro gets some valentine chocolate (or anything actually) from Azuki. Plus it looks like we’ll see some more of Nizuma and his crazy animal sounds.

 

Preview

39 Comments

  1. Kaya was really pushing the envelope this episode. She was trying to get Takagi to go on a date, came to the apartment, and even tried to get Miho to come as well. She’s probably the normal character of the bunch seeing as how she thinks that was Mashiro and Miho promised each other (while admirable) is weird.

    I especially liked that Hattori and the cheif editor really analyzed the duo’s work. I think Hattori was holding back since he didn’t want to give them false hope of making it. Now that they got the truth and Hattori has shown all his cards (how much he cares), they’ve actually come up with a plan to get serialized in the shortest amount of time possible.

    Also on Kaya crying: from the looks of it maybe she didn’t get good enough scores on a test or something which might jeopardize her chance of going to the same school as takagi. That’s just my guess anyway.

  2. They finally get to the Money & Intelligence part. They were almost doing like a manga chapter per episode for a while there. I don’t even know if this season will even get to the debut of my favorite character.

    Jaysus
      1. Well, the chapters admittedly tend to go over quite a lot within their short span. They’re very dialogue heavy, but that’s to be expected.
        Still, it does give the anime a rather slow-paced feeling.

        I’ve got to ask, who is your favorite character?

        Kora
      2. You probably didn’t realize due to the way they turned “lots of words recap” into a lengthy, restful piece all the time. Also, last episode was 50% anime-only material to give more depth to things. That you didn’t even notice proves they did a good job fleshing things out well. 😉

        Also: Fukuda?

        Michael Chandra
      3. Actually, episodes 8 and 9 covered LESS than one manga chapter each, but thankfully the pace picked up again with this episode.

        I assume Jaysus’s favorite character is the same as mine: Show Spoiler ▼

        Kurofune
  3. is it just me or the style of the first half of the episode looks a bit different?
    Kaya is so adorable… wish Azuki will join the mix sometimes… just my wish though…
    all the characters they drew were interesting-looking… but the brain idea sounds more fun 🙂
    can’t wait for next episode to see what is up with the crying scene, and chocolate perhaps

    jrj
  4. Its good to see that they’re getting the hang of it. I also felt relieved seeing that Mashiro’s drawing is not holding back Takagi. Although there’s not much AzukixMashiro scenes the pairing of Takagi and Miyoshi is perfect and definitely entertaining.

    look at the funny faces lol 😛

    Nhelraios
  5. Isn’t it mad cool how they said Kishimoto (Naruto) and Toriyama (DragonBall) were among the ones who reviewed the Tezuka award submissions and made notes on their submission? I thought that was awesome when it came up in the manga.

    SOSAnimeBoy
  6. Just ran into an interesting difference between manga and anime: To show off Hattori’s enthousiasm, the anime took the single meeting into two: They broke off after he said it’s fatal, then showed him the next day (asap basically) with dark eyes from lack of sleep because he spent a while trying to figure out what to do with them. Comes less out of nowhere and more after hard thinking, so while it also serves to buy more anime time, it also makes a nice impact on how Hattori’s personality strikes people.

    Michael Chandra

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