With Ogawa back to Team Ashirogi, Mashiro is confident that they can submit before the deadlines of their two titles. Can they make it or not? Later, the fight between which new manga is the best manga around begins.
Because the episode is divided into parts, let's talk about Ogawa for starters. As we all know, he is one of Ashirogi's first assistants and when Detective TRAP was cancelled, he left the group. The only thing we know about this guy is that he is a pro assistant and that he has a family. This aspect of his was never expanded, until now. The thing with Ogawa is that he is a man who wants to stick close to the planned schedule because of his other jobs so that he has something to give for his wife and child. It's understandable, but the problem is that most members of Team Ashirogi are willing to stay up all night just to finish all the manuscripts in time while as for Ogawa; he has the luxury to leave the place and not do some sacrifices of his own! It didn't help that he is the "chief" of the group!
Even if that is the case, he is still doing his job as chief even if he leaves the studio. He is worried that Mashiro can't finish it considering his current weak state. So how the heck he is doing his job as chief? As it turns out, he actually asked some of his fellow assistants if they can help Ashirogi when it comes to making manga. To put it simply, he didn't really abandoned the team, he just looked for solutions so that they can fix this problem! I am starting to like Ogawa a bit more.
The showdown between Reversi and Zombie Gun is interesting. Seeing PCP rank first for three weeks is one great feat but the fact that Niizuma made a new character just to counter PCP is quite something. Aside from the twist that Niizuma pulled when it comes to the villains, this showdown made the duo realize the manga's weakness. This weakness is that if they want Reversi to be epic, they should stick with the premise of the show that features two protagonists. This is also around the time we learned one of the principal lessons in shonen manga, if the villain sucks, replace him with a better villain. This is one of the reasons why titles such as Naruto and Dragon Ball lasted this long.
But in Reversi's case, they can't pull such feat or else, it will end up like Death Note's second half. To those who are not aware, after L's death, the series continued and introduced two new characters to pit against Light. Making them L's spiritual successors is a smart move but the problem is, Death Note is not about these two, but it is about Light vs. L and that's it. Considering that the guys who made this series are the ones who made Death Note, guess this is something they realized along the way and decided to put it.
The shonen battle manga villain rule is not the most important thing that I learned from this episode. I guess the best lesson we learned in this one is that quality comes first over quantity. In Reversi's case, continuing it after the duel between the two protagonist ends will turn Reversi into a completely different series, unless they can have something to connect into so that the second half of the series. This episode can be also seen as a social commentary to long running manga titles that seem to have no end. A masterpiece is not measured in terms of length, but in terms of quality of the work. With that in mind, Takagi's worry about Reversi finally ended and is now focused in writing more stories about the duel between the two protagonists.
