It’s been a while since I wrote an episode review for Bakuman, but here it is, I just did a review for episode 17! Anyways, Mashiro accepts the summer job of being Niizuma’s assistant and along with it; he met Nakai and Fukuda, his other assistants. Naki here is the old guy on his thirties while Fukuda is that white-haired guy. Enough with the character descriptions, let’s get this over with!
Asides that it is pretty rare that I use the show’s episode titles, the reason why I used it is because of two things. First, Niizuma has been quite cocky and doesn’t listen much to his editor, instead he spends time drawing the manuscript and submitting it and because of this, CROW’s rankings slowly drops after the first chapter due to it being not interesting.
This is when the Goblin part of the title comes in. Eiji has been occupied with the praises coming from those in Jack’s editorial department because he is, accordingly, a genius with the said praise stuck in his head that at the end of the episode he admitted that he turned into a “goblin.”
Second, as for the Kindness part, if not for Mashiro not observing Niizuma, the talk about popularity will not be brought up which ended up with a pseudo meeting between Mashiro, Niizuma and Fukuda just to help their Niizuma fix his problem in making CROW interesting.
As for the new characters, Nakai is one of those pro-assistants who still want to become a full-fledged manga-ka and as seen in this episode, he is envious with the youth around him, makes me pity the guy. As for Fukuda, he is cocky and somewhat a good mix between Niizuma, and that guy who likes to draw moe in some episode that I forgot. Even though he is a jerk that deserves to be punched, deep inside he is good guy who works as an assistant and as a convenience store clerk at morning.
Asides from the new characters, this is one episode in which we saw Niizuma having the needed character development. I mean, for the past few weeks, he is acting weird, doing poses (in this episode, he did Kamen Rider 1’s pose that caused me to fanwank a bit and mutter his henshin phrase, Rider… Henshin), and leave his manuscripts lying on the floor. It was fun when it lasted but what’s next? Thank God, the writers heard my wish!
Overall, it is one worthy episode to be watched. Asides that we saw Niizuma finally having the needed character growth, we met Ashirogi Muto’s possible rivals in the form of the kind-hearted Nakai and the jerk Fukuda. Finally this show is getting much more interesting due to the change of pace with our characters! Now, when we will see episodes that involve Takagi’s own personal growth?
