BEST IN THE WORLD!
Iwase is having problems because NATURAL is not doing well when it comes to rankings, which leads to her plan to quit Jack. Later, the current Shonen Jack editor is reassigned to Hisshio Jack, a new magazine. To personally thank the authors, he visited their respective homes or studios. What will be Ashirogi and Niizuma's reaction of his visit?
First is with Iwase in this episode, I already expected that they will do an episode focusing on her work with NATURAL after Niizuma brought up that the manga is getting boring lately. For once, she realized that maybe, Takagi has surpassed her and that he can't reach his rival. This leads us to a scene showing us how depressed she is after hearing comments from the readers, and realizing that she doesn't have a boyfriend. Scratch the boyfriend part, but that's the impression I got after she hanged up the phone while Aoki is busy with Hiramaru in one of their tea dates.
With that in mind, it all leads up to her plan to quit Jack, which caused everyone to get worried, especially Takagi who considers Iwase as his rival. After some words of encouragement coming from Team Fukuda, to be more specific, words coming from the Ashirogi duo, Iwase once again has the strength to continue her work as a manga author. Though she didn't officially join Team Fukuda, at least she is still the prideful Iwase that we all knew.
Second is with the editor change, this new twist in the series also showed us a different side of the current editor. He can be approachable if he wants to, and as seen in this episode, he knows how to praise someone for their hard work! Because there is a change of editor, obviously, someone needs to be the new associate editor of the magazine. Since the series barely has focus on the editors less Yoshida, Miura, Hattori and Yujirou, and those other editors that I forgot their names after they were introduced, I was surprised that Aida got the position of associate editor. After a few minutes of thinking, it makes sense considering that his team has Niizuma in it, who accomplished a lot in just a short period of time.
As for the new team leader, I already expected that Yujirou will get that job. As for the new editor of Shonen Jack, I was surprised that guy is the editor of Yu-Gi-Oh! This made me wonder what are the editorial decisions he made for the said series to become this successful. Is the man behind who pushed Kazuki Takahashi to focus more on the card games and drop the other games earlier featured in the series? This also made me wonder what other manga titles he handled.
Because the current editor will be moved to Hisshio Jack, he decides to visit the manga author's homes, or in some cases, their studios. In Niizuma's case, aside from the obligatory flashback and his realization on how much Niizuma has grown over the years as an author, he also learned his plan to make the best manga in the entire world. In the editor's visit to Ashirogi's studio, we learned more about his working relationship with Tarou Kawaguchi, Mashiro's uncle. Learning that he has this promise with him to take care of his nephew once he is old enough to be part of Jack is something that struck me. The reason why he is too strict with Ashirogi is because of that will. It makes a lot of sense, and it caused me to lose this impression I have about him being quite a jerk for obvious reasons.
Now that we are done with the author visits part, it is time to talk about what this episode is all about. Ashirogi's new series that has something to do with demons, while Niizuma's new series that has something to do with zombies. Ashirogi's new manga is basically Death Note less the notebook, with more demons in it and more psychic stuff. To make it more interesting, it's an unorthodox standard battle manga, something that they can only come up with.
Niizuma's new series is basically a zombie who falls in love with a human and fights more zombies in the process. So yeah, it's something that I didn't expect Niizuma to create because it sounds so unorthodox. This then leads us to a conclusion that Ashirogi and Niizuma are influencing each other with their works, causing this kind of fusion when it comes to their work. The big question is whose manga will win at the end, Ashirogi's story about the battle between two demons or Niizuma's zombie love story with some fights in the side?
