Because of the unexpected +NATURAL and CROW crossover, Takagi decides to do a story arc for PCP after checking Takahama's Seigi no Mikata, which reminded them their days in making Detective TRAP. Can the new character named Akechi help raise the stakes for PCP?
In the previous episode, Mashiro focused on improving his art while as for Takagi, he decided to improve his writing by doing a story arc for PCP, something that haven't done in while thanks to Detective TRAP's cancellation. One thing that I admire about Takagi in this episode is that his determination to do a story arc even after Hattori told him of the risks of making a series, especially when they are having trouble with their serialization. But because of the said determination, they were able to get Hattori's approval to do a series.
For the planned story arc itself, the planned story will introduce Akechi, the only guy who notice that there is someone pulling of perfect crimes. The way Takagi come up with the story arc is something that we don't see every day since most of the planning happen off-screen. Seeing how he plans things for an upcoming story arc is really fun to watch since even a guy like Takagi can also experience some minor road blocks in thinking of a good story arc. This is what happened to Takagi, he already has a plan for chapters 1-3 but he doesn't have a plan for chapters 4 and 5.
Even though Mashiro said that they can do a story arc while Takagi is thinking for chapters 4 and 5, Hattori decided not for them to do it since it is still premature, especially when they are trying to beat +NATURAL and CROW. Hattori is indeed the perfect editor for these two. The next day, Takagi decided to go to his old elementary school to get some inspiration only to end up back to the studio and get the perfect inspiration from Mashiro who received a text message from Azuki! Here comes the fun part in this episode, how Takagi thought of the concluding chapters of the story arc.
The concluding chapters is really interesting, aside that Mashiro pointed out that having a team phone is rather impossible in real life (well, it is possible if you have enough money), the way how Takagi played with the character limit of cellphones is something really interesting. To those who are wondering how he played the cellphone's character limitations, what he did is that he use the spaces of text messaging to create a special code that someone might figure out if you read certain characters in a certain order. Guess this will be quite a trouble for the translators of PCP due to the wordplay!
Now that they are done with the story planning, they finally got the go signal from Hattori to write the story arc but Takagi feels that there is something missing in it. This is when the flashback scene earlier in the episode started to make some sense. To be honest, the flashback scene with Akina feels a bit out of place but thanks to her chat with Takagi later in the episode, it finally makes sense. The flashback made us realize the rivalry between the two is something that goes deeper; it's a mutual respect between two writers that started back in high school.
The said rivalry is something that Takagi realized that he felt missing in his manuscript. Now to the main highlight of the episode, us reading a chapter of PCP in which some fans call manga-ception since we are reading a manga that exist on the manga's universe! One thing that I like about it is how the animators retained the original manga panels and gave it life by moving the panels in a way for us to feel the intensity of the scene, especially how Akechi feels that he is tricked by PCP.
The final scene of this chapter is really touching; the PCP recognized their rival and that Akechi don't want to know the identities of PCP for now since he will deduce it himself. Wow, just wow, that scene made me want to read PCP, if only Ohba and Obata will make it in real life.
