First Impression – Bakuman S2

Our favorite overly-enthusiastic bunch is back~! Who’s ready for some enthusiasm injections?

	Is this real? Am I really here after a whole year? Am I really back here at the beginning of October with the second season of Bakuman? IS THIS REALITY? Indeed it is conscious as six months to its first ending, our fantastic duo is back for a second season of enthusiastic manga-making while being accompanied by all sorts of new challenges for them to take on. While I found my Bakuman fix from catching up with the manga (which I and countless others will HIGHLY recommend because you can’t ignore the brilliance that is Ohba and Obata together),  I missed the animation that got my love for the series started. With that, let’s get this enthusiastic tag-team post started!
	Oh hey all~ Oh man it’s been a while since I’ve done a review of any sort. Well, maybe about 2 months but that is kind of long. I’m even unsure if I know how to make a review post now hah! But you’ll be hearing more from me somewhere here on Metanorn. But yeah! Bakuman is finally back and it only took a few anime seasons to come back. Glad it wasn’t a long wait and man I am so looking forward to what happens next with this new editor. So let’s get this rolling…
	Like I said in the Anime Addicts Anonymous podcast, everybody needs enthusiasm injections!!! Life would be nothing without them and a boost here or there really makes it easy. So, join Hoshi and I for another season’s worth of ENTHUSIASM!
	At the end of the past season, Mashiro and Takagi finally achieved their goal of getting serialized in Jump with their one-shot ‘Detective Trap’. Yet when it comes to the meeting, Hattori brings along another editor, Miura, and suddenly announces that he’ll be their new supervisor! Hattori goes to explain that since he’s working on other series, including One Piece, it would be bad to hand these off to someone else. And so, they needed to add someone else to supervise Detective Trap, despite Hattori and Ashirogi being together with it this long. As he leaves, Miura says Hattori had begged desperately to continue working with them, but of course, still wasn’t allowed to. With that, the two rush outside and thank Hattori for everything he’s done before he enters the elevator.

You have received the glittery-eyed Hattori sign of approval.

After their touching goodbye, Miura goes over the formal issues of salaries and assistants, then mentions a New Year’s party they are to attend since all serialized authors are invited. By the next day they are introduced to their assistants, Ogawa, Kato, and Takahama. Ogwa, their pro assistant, quickly gets things arranged for them, making them feel more professional than ever.

As January 17^th rolls around,  Ashirogi are picked up a chauffer and driven to a fancy, brightly lit building for the News Years party. Inside, the two manage to find not only Hattori and Miura, but Niizuma as well! Behind him however is a new, somewhat gloomy face that belongs to Hiramaru, the new genius author of another newly serialized manga called Otter 11. He accidentally manages to bring the mood down for poor Ashirogi Muto, but with Miura and the proceeding party, they quickly regain their spirits. Takagi even ends up winning a tv for the studio from winning a game of bingo!

Towards the end of the party, the Editor in Chief introduces them to a man named Mashirito, who knew Mashiro’s uncle back when he was serialized. He gives them so encouragement and proceeds to leave, but Mashiro says that he’ll do the things his uncle couldn’t do: make a living off of making manga and getting first place in the surveys.

With that, Mashio decides to send a text to Azuki to remember his determination that night. Yet, as Azuki receives the text that promises once again to make their dreams come true, she smiles for only a moment…~

And now it’s time to say welcome back to those fantastic expressions~

End thoughts~So glad that this new episode really left off from the last season and it made following what happened previous so easy to go. So we all knew that Ashirogi Muto would be getting a new editor and I so knew that it would be some annoying guy. But what was even more cool was how the new editor is such a big fan of Mashiro’s uncle. It’s all sad that Hattori isn’t the editor anymore but I’m sure we’ll be seeing him a bit more later in the series (yes maybe I have read ahead hah). But with that aside, the studio is always cool when it’s getting praised and to see that the boys get some assistants is cool. But it kind of feels like they’re not as high up there when the assistants are introduced. Such professionalism in the job is given with Ogawa present and the criticizing of the studio was amusing. As well, the introductions of the other assistants was funny having a girl and a 19 year old boy who gives such a smug look at Mashiro like he knows he is just as good. Considering the opening song, we can see that people will get along just fine.

I have never really had a liking to the opening themes for Bakuman. I guess that I just don’t like its whole happy slice of life type feel of opening with its mellow songs or I you can just say that I have no liking for the singers. But I did however like the ending theme song. I could tell right away who the singer was and it’s one of my favorite artists, Tommy heavenly6. Man she changes the names she uses to identify herself for her certain songs a bit too much or I am just not up to date (The Brilliant Green). The animation for this is typically the same as the previous season. It still looks decent but Azuki’s hair is still fugly.

I do say, the introduction of Hiramaru is so so so amusing. Here we have a guy who out of the blue picks up a shonen jack magazine and decides to give it a shot in hopes of becoming rich so that he can do nothing but eat and slip. But it probably never occurred to him how he will actually have to work to meet deadlines and it’s not an easy job as you’d think. Poor man is so depressed at the New Years party but so amusing with his cold attitude that just spreads to Ashirogi Muto while Eiji is all happy and hyper. As well, the whole New Years party scene was pretty cool and the Bingo! Man, sounds boring but cool to win a TV. Seeing Hiramaru begging Eiji to listen to his problems made me crack up. I think that for now, Hiramaru is my favorite character. Anyways, overall this opening for the new season was pretty good. I look forward to seeing Ashirogi Muto’s serialization progress and I’ll be following this series for sure.If you have been following up with the previous season, you already know how much Hattori has worked with the boys to make them reach a part of their goal. If you have been in the fandom, you already should appreciate how difficult it is to have a serialized manga. The source material out of which anime and movies spring up. A very difficult medium to stay abreast of. I mean, look at the mangaka of Hunter x Hunter, he keeps on going on hiatuses after 2-3 months of regular work.

Anyways, coming to the first episode, the pacing was as usual following the events of Ashurogi Mutou after they hit the big luck of getting serialized. It’s also time for changes as Hattori’s leaving  (So gonna miss him!) for better things and the new guy is an overenthusiastic one, grating to the ears and eyes even. But I guess, you can’t really hate him because he brought capable minions to assist the budding mangaka team.

The thing that I loved is as usual was Eiji’s eccentricity. I guess, this character is one of the reasons I like Nobuhiko Okamoto so much and his floundering about and calling most of his worthy competitors sensei. Seiyuu of Hiramaru as Masakazu Morita was a nice surprise and I’m liking how he’s adding variety to his roles; this one is going to be hella interesting as well. I haven’t read too far off in manga so I’m curious to know what would be the teething problems of serialization and managing a high school routine. More Ashirogi Mutou is really not bad, peeps. :3Was I the only one who seriously fangirled over that Detective Trap opening sequence? Even though it was only for a few seconds, it was quite AWESOME. I wish they gave more of that like they did with the Super Hero Legends opening sequence last season (Mashiro you could’ve thought of it longer!). As for Bakuman’s new opening however, I have to say it felt kind of lazy by them just using scenes that will be coming up in the series. It was still really nice though, and the song was great too~ Ten times better than BlueBird, which I still detest after all these months.

「Dream of Life」by Itou Shouhei

One thing I absolutely love so far is how they animated Miura. HE’S SO MUCH FUN ANIMATED~ In this same part in the manga he was a bit annoying to me, but here I was ready to get up and just flail my arms about with him. He definitely adds to the ever addicting enthusiasm Bakuman manages to bring to us, which is good for this enthusiasm injection addict. Though, I have to say, I had imagined Miura’s voice would be more high-pitched (same for Hiramaru), but instead it was quite deep and sounded very gurgly at times (Sorry Daisuke Kirii!). I couldn’t help but giggle a little over that. Now for Hiramaru, I just…I LOVE HIS CHARACTER. He’s like a needle that pops that enthusiasm bubble, but manages to bring comedy from his overdramatic, depressed outlook of things. I can say he’ll probably bring more of that wacky pizzazz like Niizuma does. I’m definitely looking forward to more of him

Overall, it was a rather enjoyable episode, and with faster pacing! I know last season some had some complaints about the slow pacing, so hopefully they stick with this. The story seems to be getting even more interesting now that they’re ACTUALLY serialized and we get to see how things will change for Mashiro and Takagi. I’m a bit scared for our enthusiasm injections as now that they’ve completed their main goal, what other major goal, other than the obvious get-an-anime one, will there be? Yet, since this is Bakuman, I’m sure we’ll still get our decent amount of enthusiasm somehow. I, like a lot of others, was also quite sad that Hattori won’t be with Ashirogi now, but it’s nice to see that he’s still around. The big issue though that has my stomach twisting is if Miura will be a good editor for them or not, because if not, who knows what kind of disasters might happen. I have to say it was nice to feel some familiarity; not just manga familiarity, but tone familiarity, you can say. Watching the first episode to a new anime is kind of nerve-racking as you don’t know if it’ll be good, etc. etc. but to come back to a show that I personally adore, and feel that familiarity made me feel so comfortable and excited, and I couldn’t wait to go back to blogging it. With that, I can definitely say I’m more than happy to be back with Bakuman for another 24 episodes. Bring it on second season~!!

Preview:

Time for their serialization to take off! But will Ashirogi get along with their assistants? And what has happened to Azuki to cause her to look so depressed? Until next week then~!!

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.