Great Mangaka

"Takumi, are you coming for lunch today?"

In the morning, Takumi got dressed and went out, and Aika asked him from the courtyard.

"No, the company is very busy."

Takumi turned his head and saw Aika crouching in the courtyard, planting vegetables in the dug-up earth.

After moving, Aika said she wanted to use the courtyard to grow vegetables. At first, Takumi disagreed. 'Other people's courtyards were full of flowers. It would be in bad taste to use them to grow vegetables.' But after a few days, he relented. Aika didn't like going out to play, so he had to find her something to do so she could grow vegetables. But Aika knew Takumi's idea and decided to plant some vegetables casually and use more land for flowers.

"Shiori, are you going today?"

Takumi looked at Shiori next to Aika, wearing a hat and with a hand full of dirt. The girl was helping Aika.

"No, I can't do anything there." Shiori turned and smiled: "I'll help Aika-san plant some things."

Shiori felt helpless. She couldn't help Takumi at Hinotori Publishing, and school would start in a few days. She could take the opportunity to help Aika tidy up the garden.

After living here for a while, Aika and she have a very good relationship. Shiori likes this family and the community environment. She feels that this is like her second home and wants to beautify it.

If you plant flowers and fruits in the garden, Takumi will undoubtedly be very happy when they ripen.

"I've helped him..."

Shiori thought; she didn't mind being separated from Takumi. She wanted to provide him with a warm environment and for him to smell the fragrance of the flowers she planted as he fell asleep.

Although she didn't say it clearly. But Alice caught her thoughts several times. Then she joked with her: "I didn't expect you to be so romantic."

From time to time. Shiori also retorted. 'Alice was a young woman, of course, she couldn't understand the romantic feelings of this country girl. In fact, Alice tried to help plant something several times, but she made a complete mess of it.'

"Then I'm leaving."

Takumi nodded and turned to leave.

Outside the courtyard, a black car was waiting for him. Takumi got in and drove away under the gaze of Aika and Shiori.

"I always feel that Takumi... is no longer like a child."

Aika watched the car drive away. She said with some emotion that her son had a special car picking him up every day, as if he had become an adult with a successful career, which made her feel a little strange.

"Forget it, Aika-san, let's plant the seeds quickly!"

Shiori smiled and urged Aika to get to work.

Two days ago, when Takumi brought the manga Bakuman to Hinotori Publishing, the company decided to accelerate its progress. Next week's Bakuman will have three episodes.

The editorial department's editor and Takumi have refined the worldview, making it more realistic. The story content has not changed. Kurosawa commented that he can draw the content mainly based on mangaka like this. The story of Bakuman is already quite perfect.

Therefore, Takumi had an assistant, and three assistants helped him draw Bakuman.

Like the girls' manga, the assistants were mangaka and quickly got to work. In addition, Bakuman's style was more realistic, which also put them at ease. If it had been Takumi's previous manga style, they would have had problems.

After the serialization began, the assistants took on most of the work, but Bakuman was too important, and the company insisted that Takumi be the main artist. Fortunately, he had digital post-production, and with the help of the editorial department, he was able to finish the original draft of an episode in one day. This original draft was saved on the computer, and then the assistants reviewed it until publication. Takumi didn't need much time for drawing.

The work on Inuyasha and Detective Conan was still being done at his house, and the assistants gradually got used to it and could finish it in three nights. Sakura and Tomato kept saying that the computer was a magic weapon and regretted not having used it at first.

In short, Takumi's four manga: the situation is as follows:

every week, he spends one day drawing Bakuman, a few hours preparing Ouran High School Host Club, and three nights drawing Detective Conan and Inuyasha... The total time is quite manageable.

This efficiency can be considered astonishing, and the biggest contribution is computer graphics. With a computer, Takumi only needs to draw once and let others modify it, without having to redraw it if there's an error, which saves a lot of time.

Furthermore, after eight months in the manga career, Takumi's drawing speed is far from what it was at the beginning. If he doesn't think, he can finish the first draft of almost 20 pages of a plot in an hour. He saves the first draft and gives it to the assistant to draw the background, dots, and post-editing. He doesn't need them to return it. The speed is not fast.

However, Takumi has not yet reached that level of astonishment.

The manga are finished, and only the production of the Fate/Stay Night game remains. This work is not like manga. It is a very large project, and the amount of text alone represents several stacks.

Takumi gathered 5 people, and they worked together to describe the plot and dialogue, which also took him several days.

The most problematic thing is that Fate/Stay Night needs thousands of artists. Its computer-generated images require high definition. Each image requires the hard work of several artists. In the end, not only the artists who were eliminated, but also those who had not yet debuted or short-stature artists were recruited to serve as soldiers.

Miyuki gathered 10 game designers to work with the artists. Daily, at work, mangaka from various offices could be seen drawing different character graphics and landscape backgrounds in groups. Faced with such a busy schedule, the 10 designers felt pressured.

All the mangaka's work had to be reflected in the game's structure they were creating. Faced with such pressure and trust, one designer resigned two days after arriving, and the others even stayed late developing the galgame's structure to collaborate with the artists.

Takumi didn't allow Miyuki to stay up late. The designers knew she had just recovered from a serious illness and refused her help. However, despite this, Miyuki summoned more people, and the game's progress accelerated even further.

"The lines and scripts are finalized. If all goes well, Fate/Stay Night might be released in less than a month."

When several people informed Takumi, he was surprised and happy.

He was very satisfied with the speed, but too much speed was not necessarily good. There were problems with music creation and voice actor selection. The evaluation of each galgame was closely related to its dubbing. Takumi didn't want to create a defective product, so, of course, he had to do it himself.

The difficulty of composing the music was not great. He wrote it in one night. To the surprise of the company's employees, Takumi explained: "I planned this story a long time ago, just like the song."

This explanation was understood by others. Fate/Stay Night has a very deep setting and worldview, and it takes others a long time to understand it after reading the information.

Genji analyzed the initial information and even regretted that it was a philosophical work.

Although this statement cannot be taken seriously, it at least shows that Fate/Stay Night is qualified to be an independent system. For such a work, ordinary people would think that it is a story that Takumi had planned a long time ago, and it was impossible for it to appear out of nowhere.

The game's music was successful, but there were thousands of musical pieces, and one or two bands couldn't keep up with the production pace. Hinotori Publishing had to invite thousands of people, and funding increased by hundreds of millions. The soundtrack became the biggest production cost of the game.

As for the voice actor, Takumi first selected from Pokémon's animation voice actors. Shiori also participated. Her voice change was excellent. Takumi gave her two completely different roles: Rin Tohsaka and Saber. Unexpectedly, all auditions passed at once.

However, not all Pokémon voice actors passed, and there were still some vacancies. Takumi assigned Alice and Haru to search. If found within three weeks, Fate/Stay Night could be completed as planned.

After leaving the soundtrack and voice actors, Takumi went to the animation production department and commissioned Kenji to produce the animation for Fate/Stay Night. 'Of course, animation cannot be missing from video games.' Although these are short animations similar to opening and closing credits, their production costs are considerable and the requirements are very high.

The animation production department does not dare to neglect it. Pokémon generates millions of yen, and the company doesn't care about this expense.

Inviting professional bands to compose music, short animations, and computer-generated drawings are the main production costs of a game. According to the latest count, it exceeded 100,000,000 yen, but the amount of excess was not large and did not have a great impact.

Takumi was lucky that voice actors in this world were inexpensive and did not generate much labor cost. If the cost of voice actors increased a little more, the production cost of Fate/Stay Night would exceed the standard.

But in the end, everything went well. During this period, Takumi continued to leak information to the outside world, raising others' expectations for new manga and games to the maximum.

A busy week soon came to an end. Ouran High School Host Club and Bakuman were finished. The final quality of these two manga, produced under the nose of the editorial department, made Takumi applaud.

Both manga were sent to the publisher for publication. The number of serialized manga in Weekly Shōnen and Weekly Shōjo Manga this week has been significantly reduced, but the cost of the magazines has also been reduced. We look forward to the market's reaction.

On Tuesday, March 10th, the day before Weekly Shōjo Manga's premiere, it was also the last day of reporting at Osaka's N.º 1 High School.

Takumi took advantage of the morning to prepare to go to school and complete the procedures. Shiori also packed her small suitcase. After breakfast, she waited outside Takumi's house and looked at the quiet courtyard.

"Goodbye..."

With a touch of melancholy, Shiori and Takumi got into the car. She was returning to the closed school.

Shiori was reluctant to leave Takumi.

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