Bakuman。 #19

Volume 19 of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's Bakuman。 opens with a quietly gorgeous cover: a young woman with long dark hair sits outdoors at night, absorbed in reading an open book, a starlit blue sky and swaying palm tree framing her in a mood of serene reflection. It's a surprisingly tender image for a series about the competitive world of manga publishing — the kind of breathing room the chapter title "Breather and Party" seems to promise. A compelling penultimate chapter in Ohba and Obata's beloved Shonen Jump series, rendered here with the clean, expressive linework that defines Obata's cover art.