Thursday, November 4, 2010

Anime Reviews: Bakuman Episode 3 - Parent and Child


Mashiro and Takagi go to Mashiro's uncle's old studio, and I for one fell in love with the place. I'd love to have an entire apartment filled with manga, and books and everything I need while writing. But I guess I'll have to settle for getting a study one of these days. Eventually.


The reason for the large number of manga in the studio is that manga makes the best reference for manga. I really like this, since it applies to not just manga. One of the best ways to learn how to write a book is to read a lot of books. This is what I've been doing the past few weeks, increasing how much time I spend reading books. Which is why you're getting Dresden Files reviews every Tuesday. Eventually.


Though it seemed odd that the anime decided to change the name of "Jump" to "Jack." The manga uses "Jump", and I can't see any conceivable reason why they would change it in the anime. Unless it has to do with copyright issues, which makes no sense whatsoever.


The two of them go over the old names, storyboards, and talk about the process of getting a document submitted to an editor and working with one to get published. They talk about their favorite manga for a while, both deciding that they love manly manga.


They both decide that in order for Mashiro and Azuki to get married as quickly as possible they will have an anime by the time they are eighteen.


Really, if I was forced to describe this series in two words, I'd have to say that it's a Man's Romance. It's all about doing your best to achieve your dreams, even at the cost of your own life. Not a very realistic, nor even adult attitude, but it resonates inside us, and I for one can't help but enjoy the romance of it.


The rest of the episode is them finding out about his Uncle's past with the girl he was in love with. I really don't care for this back story. It's not bad, but it depresses me, not as much as it did the first time I read it, as by now I've grown somewhat jaded to it. Either way, they find out about the girl, and even find out that she's Azuki's mother. So if Nobuhiro, Mashiro's Uncle, had married her, then Azuki and Mashiro would have been cousins. A bit squicky for western readers, but from what I've gathered the Japanese don't have the same stigma about cousins marrying that westerners do. So even if they had been cousins chances are the romance between Azuki and Mashiro would have been unchanged had his Uncle and her Mother gotten married.


Which just makes their failed romance all the more depressing, since thinking of only one or the other of the two romances being possible dulls a bit of the sadness. But if both had of been possible then there's nothing saying, "It's good this romance failed so this one could live." Since both could have worked.


I'll be honest, this episode scores low for me just because I had to go over the back story again. It's not a bad episode, but a good half portion of it grates on my nerves, so I can't give it more than a...

C

Not a terrible episode, but by my regular standards not a great episode. I'll have to say, that I think so far it's the weakest of the series. It scores fairly low, but not low enough to make me stop watching. For those interested, I'll post an explanation of my grading scale shortly.


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