Bakuman – Episode 8

A man walked into a bar, he said ow

Strike a pose!

Such an evil aura… or just depression

That’s just weird

Keep dreaming Mashiro, keep dreaming

Let him have it!

To get a manuscript ready for the Tezuka award Takagi uses his lesson time to write out notebook after notebook of story ideas. Because of this Takagi hasn’t been sleeping much, and Kaya’s noticed Takagi’s exhaustion. She even calls Azuki, but just gets teased about it.

After another all-nighter Takagi finally comes up with something that he and Mashiro both like and gets to work on drawing it.

The story is about how a government ranks everyone’s brains and how the highly ranked controls the lower ranks. The heroes in the story fight against the highly ranked and try to end this system. But they realise that it’s the supercomputer that ranks everyone that’s controlling the humans. And that’s the battle element, humans against AI computers, robots etc, that sort. The heroes would obviously be using some sort of sword for Shounen and I think Mashiro suggested something similar to light sabre. Happy with everything, they get to work.

Even with only 20 days, they manage to finish on time and like what they have.

They give it to Hattori and he’s pleased with it. He enters it for the Tezuka award, but the results don’t come out until Novemeber, so he wants them to write something with publication in mind as their next one. ‘They should aim for Shounen Jack NEXT’.

They’re unable to concentrate on drawing or writing as they’re fantasizing about winning the Tezuka award.

Midterms results come out and Takagi has dropped to third on the school rankings. But he doesn’t care. He’s more worried about the next name and how he can’t think up anything good, but Hattori calls and tells him that they’re in the top 8. This means that their names will at least be in print. Now their spirits are high, but they won’t be able to concentrate until the results, so they decide to take a break.

It’s finally the day of the results. Both of them wait nervously by the phone. But after a long wait, they get the call. It’s bad news. They didn’t make the top four.

But with Takagi’s renewed spirit as he starts writing again, Mashiro picks himself back up as well.

During class one day, Ishizama comes by and insults Mashiro’s art. It seems that it was the art that dragged the manga down. Angered by Ishizawa’s blunt comments Takagi punches Ishizawa in the face. The episode ends as Mashiro and Kaya try to drag him away from Ishizawa.