A fun volume, tense and interesting. The lads spend most of it worrying and wondering about their goals and the methods they've chosen, and quite rightly too. The protagonists start to draw apart from each other, but it works out in the end (and the drawing apart is partly down to already-established character traits). Hiramaru's personal and mental growth was unexpected, but welcome. The interaction of the characters remains a pleasure, and the art's still great. The only thing I didn't particularly like was the new manga introduced at the end of the story (by an unknown author) but I can't exactly hold that against Bakuman itself. ( )