「速報と本ちゃん」 (Sokuhou to Hon-Chan)
“Early Results And The Real Deal”

I think it’s happened. Kaya has won me over. I think it might have been her flamboyant attitude, her fashionable clothing, or just the way her hair is done at the end. Whatever it may be, I’m glad that she plays a decent role in this series. Besides being Takagi’s girlfriend, I think it was awfully kind of her to take the role of being Mashiro and Azuki’s in-between. As the past few episodes focused on how deep their relationship actually is, I’m glad that Kaya looks like she finally understands what really is going on. While I’m sure it bothers her that her best friend isn’t getting to experience the same type of “love” that she shares with Takagi, it just shows how supportive she’s become.

The funniest part of this week’s episode is probably watching Mashiro’s attempt to send his first message to Azuki. Extra tired after working for two days straight on Money and Intelligence, he sits down and spends the entire night trying to craft the perfect message. While I’m pretty sure he re-wrote that text message at least a hundred times – I’m sure that he didn’t get any sleep. Seeing how it was already late when he started and it was bright and sunny outside by the time he finished, it looks like three days of no sleep turns you into this. After finally deciding on what to tell her, he finally sends his message only after he hits the character limit. The irony of it all is how less than a few seconds after slaving away at this huge message, he receives a response from Azuki. Being short and sweet with her reply, I couldn’t tell if Mashiro was overly happy about getting a quick response or a little peeved about receiving such a short text in return. He even got brave enough to call her out on her short message, jokingly stating that long, well though-out messages are better. Surprisingly, Azuki responds to his statement with a pretty snarky response herself. “If you’ve got time for that, get working on manga!” Touché Azuki.

While I could compare Divine to our dynamic duo’s work ethic, I’ll save that for another post (I think Keima provided a great venue for him to compare himself with). With Money and Intelligence, I can say that I was a little disappointed with the results of the competition. Especially after Mashiro, Takagi, and Kaya came up with such an interesting pen name for our duo to use. I thought it was sweet how Kaya used part of Mashiro’s name and his “dream” of being together with Azuki as the base and then threw in part of Takagi’s name after he complained about how his name wasn’t anywhere in it. Deciding on Ashirogi Muto (亜城木夢叶) in the end, I thought it was a pretty interesting choice. Besides the awesome pen name, I wish this show wouldn’t try to troll me like it did this week. After our duo submits their manuscript for publication, all that’s left is to wait for the questionnaires to be sent in – the small piece of paper in every Shounen Jack that decide the fate of a mangaka and his manga. In this system there are two results – the early results and real deal. The early results to provide a quick glimpse into who’s favored and the real deal to pick the winners. I was ecstatic to hear that our duo scored first place during the early results. While they only had a small lead over Nizuma, I really thought that they had a chance at winning. I think Takagi and Mashiro shared my sentiments as they went as far as writing three more names for Money and Intelligence to help nudge Hattori to serialize them when the final results were released.

As I said earlier, I was disappointed to hear that our duo came in third place while Nizuma came out on top. While I thought it was a bit early to think that they had the competition in the bag, I don’t blame them for trying to be prepared if they had won the competition. What turned everything around was right at the end, instead of duo losing their fighting spirit like they did in the past, I was happy to see that they were ready to start over again. After ripping up all the names they wrote to continue Money and Intelligence, I smiled as they vowed to work toward creating something mainstream enough for them to compete against Nizuma with.

 

Preview

19 Comments

  1. awesome episode 🙂
    love the blood-shot eyes of Mashiro XD, best shot of the episode…
    totally the end result of Divine mode 🙂
    can’t wait to see their new battle manga… and meeting their rival for real.

    jrj
      1. Well, those looked just odd anyway, also they were way bigger than in the manga.
        What I’m talking about is her face, it’s much cuter now 😉 Also, she looked like she had really broad shoulders in her old school uniform. But it’s fine now 😀

        virox
      2. Of course she has broad shoulders. She is competing in both Boxing and Karate!
        So it’s far from strange if she looks more buff then the guys do as she is more well trained then them by far.

        Znail
  2. And we finally we reach the end of volume two. I guess that means this season ends on volume 4, and the end of the next one at volume 8? And RC has a new feature!

    …QUICK, EVERYONE GIVE ME A THUMBS DOWN!

    Da5id
  3. Like I said on a previous episode, Kaya is as much part of Ashirogi Muto as Saiko or Sujin, or… at least in terms of the anime, she will become.

    And they finally end vol. 2! D: Took a while… but was worth it.

    And also, whoa to RC’s new feature. haha

    solarguardian
  4. I can’t say I see the logic behind basing the ‘real’ poll on randomly selecting 1000 envelopes (all those advanced courses in statistics seem to have been wasted on me). Hattori said there’s a third poll that they don’t show the mangaka, I wonder if that’s the true results (counting every envelop)

    Nadavu

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