Tokyo: Earth Online Manga Artist

She stopped surfing the internet during this period.

Until... the deadline, Friday.

Masaya Sakurai visited Eri Aragaki's apartment again that day.

This was also what he had arranged with Eri Aragaki yesterday. When he came to collect the manuscript, he would give Eri Aragaki a written interview Q&A form to promote the collected volume.

A week before the official release of the collected volumes, he would visit again to collect the manuscript, as well as the Q&A form for the written interview and the photos of Eri Aragaki herself to be published in the magazine for pre-release marketing.

This timeline is very tight and cannot be delayed, because the printing schedule for the single volume has already been set, and the pre-release interviews need to be published in the magazine two weeks before the release; otherwise, they will not have the desired pre-release effect.

Masaya Sakurai rang the doorbell, and after a moment, the door opened.

Only Eri Aragaki and Akane Natsume are in the apartment today.

After all, it's Friday, and Erina still has to go to class. She's already intensifying her studies for next year's university entrance exams, and she goes to cram school every day after school, not returning home until evening.

Meanwhile, Ayane Takeda, who had helped Eri Aragaki finish her manuscript, had her own things to do. She had a group meeting for a programming project at school today, which was said to be the most important topic of the semester, so she couldn't miss it.

Only Natsume Akane... She came to Aragaki Eri's house and stayed with Aragaki Eri because "I don't have anything to do today anyway".

Eri Aragaki, of course, didn't mind Natsume Akane, one of her few good friends, coming to her apartment.

The two of them had each other's company. On this day when they had no work, they laughed and joked around, reading comics, playing games, or surfing the internet, always having someone to keep them company.

At this time, Eri Aragaki became bolder and often openly took advantage of Akane Natsume under the guise of friendship.

But Natsume Akane also took advantage of her, which resulted in Akane feeling like she was being taken advantage of.

After all, the two sides are of different sizes.

During this period, they compared their sizes with each other, and from small to large, they were roughly like Natsume Akane, Aragaki Eri, and Takeda Ayane.

In the afternoon, Eri Aragaki heard the doorbell ring. When she opened it, she saw Masaya Sakurai.

"Hello... Ms. Pear, excuse me."

Masaya Sakurai still looked like a middle-aged office worker, nodding politely in greeting.

"Mr. Sakurai."

Eri Aragaki quickly invited him in.

She arranged the slippers and led Masaya Sakurai to sit down on the sofa in the living room.

"Mr. Sakurai, your tea."

After Eri Aragaki poured him a cup of tea, Masaya Sakurai took the cup, thanked her, and then took a brown paper envelope from his briefcase and placed it on the coffee table.

"Thank you, Ms. Pear. Here is your written interview content. You can fill in your answers here, and I will come back to collect it later."

He said it calmly.

The envelope was unsealed and contained a printed form with about a dozen questions listed on it.

Eri Aragaki glanced at the screen and saw a few standard questions, such as "What was your original intention in creating this work?", "Which character is your favorite?", and "What would you like to say to the readers?"

There are also some more relaxed questions, such as "What do you usually like to eat?" and "What are your hobbies in your spare time?"

These questions don't seem difficult to answer; she can just spend half an hour filling them out one evening.

Eri Aragaki nodded and said, "Okay, I'll be ready then. I'll go get this week's manuscript now."

Then she turned and went into the studio, took out the brown paper file bag that she had prepared earlier, and handed it to Masaya Sakurai.

Masaya Sakurai picked up the file bag, opened it, pulled out a few pages, flipped through them, and confirmed that the page numbers and the condition of the artwork were correct before putting the file bag back into his briefcase.

He had finished his tea and placed the cup on the coffee table.

Then he stood up and said, "Then I won't bother you any longer, teacher."

He took two steps toward the entrance and then stopped.

"Oh, right."

Masaya Sakurai turned around, looked at Eri Aragaki, and said, "I think you might really need to get used to it, because you're quite good-looking, and it'll be a good way to promote yourself, so you'll have to get used to being on camera."

His words didn't sound like a polite compliment; they sounded more like advice on career planning.

With Eri Aragaki's looks and appearance, Masaya Sakurai even felt that she was no less beautiful than the models who walked the runway in Tokyo, except... she was a little too tall.

At 1.72 meters tall, she is indeed quite tall for a Japanese woman, which might not fit the mainstream Japanese ideal of a petite and delicate girl.

But Eri Aragaki is still an undeniably beautiful girl; her natural features are her greatest asset.

In addition, she is really slim. Although she is an otaku who draws comics, she consumes too much energy when drawing, which makes it impossible for her to gain weight.

Eri Aragaki's face was quite stiff.

She stood beside the coffee table, her lips twitching several times before she managed a smile that didn't look too awkward, and said, "Okay, I'll try to adapt."

"Goodbye, teacher."

Masaya Sakurai nodded, changed his shoes, and went out the door.

The door closed, and the sound of leather shoes clicking on the floor echoed in the hallway, fading into the distance.

Eri Aragaki stood by the entrance hall, hands on her hips, and let out a long sigh.

She returned to the living room, collapsed onto the sofa, and sank her head into the cushions.

At this moment, Natsume Akane looked at Aragaki Eri, frowned, and said, "Eri, if you really don't want to, you can refuse, right?"

Eri Aragaki shook her head, burying her face in the cushion, and said in a muffled voice, "No, Shueisha's contract also stipulates this, and we need to cooperate."

She was also very puzzled.

After all, judging from her past life...

Manga artists like Crocodile Teacher and Gege Akutagami never need to show their faces. They've been serializing for years, and you can't even find their full-face photos online. When they do appear in photos, they're always wearing masks or using manga self-portraits instead.

Why does she have to appear on camera herself?!

But there is a reason for this.

First of all, Shueisha has certain unwritten rules in this regard.

That is, if a cartoonist becomes famous, it's fine. Once they become famous, they have more say, and they are no longer required to appear in the picture. If they don't want to show their face, they don't have to.

However, during the early stages of their careers, Shueisha encouraged new manga artists to gain exposure.

The purpose of this is to help readers remember new comic artists, establish their recognition within the industry, and give readers a concrete image of the author when they mention the work.

If that's the purpose, then it's understandable if the new comic artist has an average face.

If there's nothing memorable about it, it's dispensable, and editors won't push it.

Characters like Crocodile Teacher and Akuta Gege are probably examples of this.

It's likely that they have very ordinary faces and nothing particularly memorable about them, plus they have a strong desire to remain out of the public eye.

The editor in charge naturally decided to just let it go, since pushing it wouldn't make any waves anyway.

Eri Aragaki suffered a loss in this respect.

She is an undisputed beauty, even though Japanese men often feel inferior because of her height.

However, her appearance is still impeccable; she is an absolute beauty.

Her pale skin tone, paired with her slightly sharp eyebrows and eyes that look a bit sleepy, makes her look stunning even without makeup. With a little styling, she could easily shoot a magazine cover.

So Masaya Sakurai and the other editors who were also responsible for nurturing Eri Aragaki saw this as an opportunity—an opportunity to market a popular shoujo manga artist.

The manga itself is of high quality, and the author's good looks add to the appeal; this combination is rare even in the history of newcomers at JUMP.

Naturally, that's what they'll demand.

Eri Aragaki could only sigh at this point, turning her face to look at Akane Natsume, and said, "Never mind, it's not a big deal anyway, it's just a photo, it's not like I'm going to be on TV for a live interview."

Chapter Sixty-Eight: Laziness is Human Nature

For the next month, Eri Aragaki worked with the editorial team, including Masaya Sakurai, to prepare for the release of the collected volume.

But she was surprisingly relaxed during this period. She wasn't as busy as she had imagined, working seven days a week without a break, from day to night. This kind of thing had never happened before.

She originally thought that preparing for the single volume would be like those days of rushing to finish the manuscript, where she would be glued to her workbench with no time to even drink water. However, the actual situation was much milder than she had expected.

After she finished the cover and the color pages at the beginning of the book.

Besides Masaya Sakurai, another editor in charge of the new editors group, Yuuki Honda, sent her the initial revision requirements.

The email listed only four points for modification.

Two of the issues are that the positions of the speech bubbles need to be slightly adjusted to prevent them from being cut off during printing, and one is that the background lines of a certain panel are too dense, which may cause the ink to smudge during printing.

Another issue is that an extra page needs to be added as a transition page between Chapter 0 and Chapter 1 of the collected volumes.

Moreover, the amount of work involved in modifying the content is quite small.

Eri Aragaki spread the manuscript out on her workbench and worked through each item on the revision list sent by Yuuki Honda. It took her about an hour to finish revising it.

She scanned the revised pages and sent them back. Honda Yuuki replied in the email, "Received, no problem," and that was the end of it.

This is also because Eri Aragaki's usual submissions are of very high quality, and this is due to her being on a winning streak.

Especially in his super creative state, the quality of his drawings is ridiculously high, with clean and crisp lines, and the rhythm of the storyboard and the completeness of the picture are far beyond the level of ordinary newcomers.

This left Masaya Sakurai and several other editors who were also in charge of the newcomers' works deeply impressed.

Especially the other senior editors who are also responsible for the works of newcomers.

When people bump into each other in the break room, they occasionally chat about the newcomers they are in charge of. Some complain that the newcomers under their supervision still can't get rid of the problem of disproportionate character proportions in the storyboards, while others complain that the teacher they are in charge of has been late for submitting drafts for three consecutive weeks.

As they chat, their gaze will inevitably fall on Masaya Sakurai, and they'll say something like, "Masaya, you've really struck gold this time."

Masaya Sakurai, holding his coffee cup, didn't deny it, but said something somewhat Versailles-esque... "It's mainly because of Riko-sensei's hard work."

The main point is that Eri Aragaki wasn't a so-called fully-fledged super rookie from the very beginning.

When she first submitted her work, her drawing skills were about the same as Hajime Isayama's.

Although her drawing skills are quite mature and impressive for a newcomer, there is still a clear gap between her and those comic artists who are known for their drawing skills.