If you look at the manga within the manga, you will see that they--much like the sad existence of Bakuman. itself--are premises, not stories. Anything semi-interesting in it is dark-and-edgy tryhard. Look at Nanamine's outsourced project. The high schooler killing high schooler thing is extreme for extremity's sake. Ashirogi remark that it's not terribly original and boasts bland characters but the real problem with the Nanamine's manga is the voyeuristic and sadistic glee of it. An omnipotent speaker deals out death sentences on a whim? For God's sake, and who dies first but the bullies and the hypocrites. The manga plays right into the sociopathic and righteous tendencies of angry young boys, not "lays bare man's ugliness." It's gauche. It's clumsy. It's also creatively bankrupt.
If you want non-mainstream, you talk about loneliness and depression, not--not whatever this is, and that's why Bakuman. and any of its manga within the manga cannot ever be non-mainstream. By the way, this obsession with non-mainstream is also grating on my last nerve.
Because okay, by the last half (third?) of the series, Bakuman. has been mired in this unfortunate bullshit about writing the best manga in the world, OMG. That's not the poi--you can't even do it like that--I can't even--you gauge it by volume sales WTF THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO IT. This and the obsession with being non-mainstream I can only attribute to a crisis of identity. Bakuman. is basically standard battle shounen manga fare, disguised as this manga industry insider thing, but in other battle manga, you win when you've beaten everybody else. In writing, when do you win? Do you do it by outselling everyone else? But the most popular thing is rarely ever also the best, so they also have to be non-mainstream. But, maybe the problem was Ashirogi having a goal in the first place, because Bakuman. purports to be about writing, and there's no goal in writing. There's the process, and that's it. You don't "beat" your rivals. If Bakuman. knows anything about rivalry in literature, it would know that literary rivalries are carried out in barely-or-not-at-all veiled attacks, conceiled in the works themselves. Writers form allegiances based on philosophical agreements and it's a competition of ideologies, not sales, not really. There's a really tone-deaf moment in the middle of the series when the editors discuss whether or not PCP can "beat" Nizuma Eiji's manga, and in the course of it not only implicitly equate popularity and quality, but also say that PCP is the best thing they have ever read. The only thing illuminating about the industry to come out of it is that the people inside the industry are prone to hyperbole.
Here Bakuman. loses track entirely, because the goal of Ashirogi is nebulously defined and because Bakuman. doesn't have meaningful character development to fall back on. Part of the identity crisis, I think, is the Ashirogi brand. Consider this, how does any of Takagi and Mashiro's life experience play into their work? Or, does their having literally no life experience impede their ability to write any meaningful story? Or, does their utter lack of personality impede Bakuman.'s chances of having a meaningful ending?
The first time I remember being inspired by Bakuman., I think, was when they talked about changing Jump. They never do that, because in reality Bakuman. is as stagnant as Jump is itself. A big arc about defying authority boils down to a mangaka wanting to work himself to death and the editors not enabling that behavior?! They flirted with jumping ship to another magazine for one minute and one second, but that pays off no tension whatsoever because OMG they don't get to fulfill their dreams exactly the way they want to fulfill it? Those stakes are absolutely meaningless and terrible, moreso for that fact that they don't follow through with it.
Bakuman. is not courageous. It doesn't evolve beyond its premise--manga about manga! We'll get married when an absurdly specific condition is met! Even though there's some interpersonal stuff in the middle of the frantic story, Bakuman. never quite earns those emotional beats, especially the romantic ones. The camaraderie between the mangaka, I buy, but the central romance? Blergh. I want the camaraderie to be tested. I want Ashirogi to outstrip the others so far that it engenders jealousy--and not just from the ugly characters. I want them to have clash of ideals and integrity. I want Bakuman. to want to be better than it is.
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