At the editorial department for Shonen Jump an editor accuses an aspiring mangaka of being too generic in his work, that there’s a difference between borrowing elements and blatantly copying them. That he should be representing his own ideas instead of those of others. This editor is known as Jellybeans Vanguard Honda, the current editor for Gintaman.
However he himself sees this position as little more than a death sentence, Gintaman despite being the scribbles of a gorilla happens to be particularly controversial and all the past editors who have worked on it suffered break downs of sorts, the first Konishi ended up only being able to shout Dondake (どんだけ), the second Daito ended up an anime otaku, and the third Nakasaki began to see himself as being far too elite. So the only way out he has is to discover an amazing aspiring mangaka to pull himself out of this fate. At which point his next appointment comes up, N3016, a highly dangerous prisoner with torn sleeves Shachi, who had in the past sent in a work about a prisoner on death row who meets the Grim Reaper.
And despite the measures that the guards go to in an attempt to ensure that he doesn’t put anyone in danger, they all decide to take a break when Shachi’s partner arrives, formerly N4264 Gintoki. Who together with Shachi forms the aspiring mangaka duo Akurogi Musai, a duo formed when Shachi asked Gintoki for his opinion as a veteran Shonen Jump fan on one of his visits. Of course they also think that they’ve fixed the problem of their work being too gloomy and everyone’s sleeves being torn off, but they’ve really just given everyone shoulder pads, put the main character in an all girl prison, and turned the two other characters into the heroines. Alongside that they also feel that setting their story in a prison makes it stand out from other romantic comedies and they’ll be following the great Yabuki Kentaro’s example by adding more detail in the tankobon releases, and when asked to see some concept art for the heroines Vanguard finds that they’ve taken shoulder pads to an entirely new level.
Following that he asks to see some of the rough sketches that Shachi had done, and the difference in Shachi’s art and Gintoki’s crappy art is as clear as day, so he asks if they could have a go at switching roles, with Shachi doing the art and Gintoki the story. And after just one day a manuscript comes in for him from this new duo, something that they decided to name CHAGEth Note after quite a few failed names, but while it looks good at first their obsession with shoulder pads is still there, their panel usage is messed up, Gintoki used it as a chance to practice his math, and it somehow got used as a message board for the Yorozuya. Leading to a sudden unexplained shift to a harem themed prison setting, and no idea as to what CHAGE means or who ASKA is. Following which Vanguard ended up in the same asylum as his predecessors, praising manga that lack originality and the use of cliche elements.
Next Episode:
Thoughts:
Kind of a let down but still a good episode, the Bakuman parodies were great and it wasn’t so bad to see Gintoki’s underling from prison Shachi again either. Sure it isn’t the first time that we’ve seen him this season but it was still great to see.
In a way it kind of suggested and backed up something that I liked, especially given that one of the gripes that I have had with this series is that characters tend to just disappear once their two episode arc was done, unless the arc was longer than that and they didn’t get a conclusive sort of end, then you can expect them to show up quite a bit from time to time but otherwise they near completely drop out. What it suggested was quite the opposite, just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean that Gintoki and the rest of the Yorozuya don’t bump into or meet the other characters from time to time, from what we could assume they must manage to bump into each other quite often.
Shachi in this episode being an example of this, he really only appears when Sorachi decides to use the prison setting but that doesn’t mean that Gintoki doesn’t visit him his underling every now and then. That said though it was kind of nice to see him again, where in this episode he was used as the high profile prisoner under heavy guard again, who despite the tough act he puts up and the fuss that the guards make over him probably isn’t really that dangerous, he just likes torn sleeves and has a cross shaped scar on his forehead. Not to mention that his dream was even to become a mangaka, not exactly the most intimidating career, and aside from that who would have thought that Gintoki’s visits would have led to the formation of a new mangaka duo, in a stark contrast to a certain other fictional duo.
For who the parodies for were almost as great as they were blatant, they even named themselves Akurogi Musai a direct parody of the pen name that a certain other duo use in Bakuman, Ashirogi Muto. Not to mention that there was just something fun about the way that Gintoki and Shachi teamed up and worked together, taking a line from Toriyama by bringing in shoulder pads and then centering an entire manga around them, giving them to every character and even throwing a mention to Yabuki Kentaro and what he how he adds more detail to the tankobon releases for To love-ru and recently its sequel, To love-ru Darkness. Aside from that I almost lost it when the Yorozuya just had to use the final product as a message board, it was almost as if Sorachi set out to put together a complete trainwreck when he was putting it together.
