Chapter 306 - Exclusive Contracts Only (1/2)
Shueisha was in the Chiyoda district, and Kodansha was in the Bunkyo district. The two districts were connected, with Bunkyo in the north and Chiyoda in the south. The distance between the two was close as well.
When Meng Fan left, Hiroji Wada was already awaiting him outside. An hour had already passed as Hiroji Wada arrived at his destination before telling his chauffeur to backtrack to here.
It was a hassle to eat together, so Hiroji Wada was pretty content when Meng Fan rejected his offer. However, the chauffeur wanted Meng Fan to stay. They dropped Meng Fan off at the entrance of Kodansha. When he heard Meng Fan say he didn’t need to be picked up afterwards, he was overjoyed but also very curious.
After all, he was a chauffeur from Toei Animation, a person in the anime industry. He was very informed on what was happening in the anime industry compared to most practitioners.
These Chinese people are very interesting. This guy had just been recommended by the godlike Oda into Shueisha, so he must have been doing some legitimate business inside during the last hour. But once he came out, why did he have to go to Kodansha? What was going on? Gee whiz. What is this guy trying to achieve here? How greedy.
The chauffeur kept this in mind. When Meng Fan departed the car, he did not leave immediately. He looked towards Kodansha to see a small old man run out.
“Goro Takahashi!”
The chauffeur immediately recognized this well-known, tiny old man, who had been in the industry for several years now.
Speaking of Goro Takahashi, he was known by another nickname — the king of leaks. He picked up several manga artists from Shueisha and Shogakukan where their serializations were almost destroyed. Recently, three or four of the artists he had ‘taken in’ had become famous. There were over a dozen who were rising in popularity, too.
Goro Takahashi’s status at Kodansha was by no means low. He was equivalent to a mascot of the firm. To other publishing houses, Goro Takahashi was a role model, a goal to work toward. Whenever they hear an anonymous manga artist ruined by serialization has become a target to Goro Takahsahi, they too will immediately pay more attention in hopes of poaching artists in similar situations. It was a topic of discussion.
Hence, Goro Takahashi was a very highly regarded figure in the manga industry, especially to those artists who wanted serialization. They all dreamed of being discovered by Goro Takahashi! It was so coveted that for some time, manga artists even paid money to ‘bribe’ Goro Takahashi.
“Did Goro-san recognize this Chinese person, too? But he doesn’t look like the type? Why does it feel like Goro is demonstrating respect towards this Chinese person!”
The driver was curious. He thought about it for a moment and decided to call Hiroji Wada and let him know of this situation. Hiroji Wada was in shock but very interested. He didn’t ask his chauffeur to keep spying and treated it as a source of entertainment. He wasn’t going to tell Shueisha either. He was just curious what this Chinese person was planning to do.
“Go ahead, Meng-san!”
Goro Takahashi happily led Meng Fan through Kodansha. After a while, he noticed that Meng Fan wanted to speak, so he immediately took Meng Fan into his office and handed him a cup of coffee.
“Thank you.”
Meng Fan sipped the coffee and stood up immediately when the small old man bowed down to him. He ushered Goro to sit down, then took out his manuscripts and story outlines from his bag before handing them to Goro. “Goro-san, I’m here on behalf of this manga. Would you mind reviewing it for me?”
“Sure.”
Goro Takahashi received the papers and thoroughly looked through them. Similar to Muto Kentaro, Goro was shocked. But the difference was that Muto Kentaro had been subtle, while Goro was completely open about his expression, mouth agape. He exclaimed: “Sugoi! Meng-san, did you draw all of these? Your drawing skills are incredible! This is S-level drawing! Your style is also superb!”
He looked at another page, his expression changing to a more serious tone.
“The storyboard!”
“What an incredible layout!”
To a manga artist, drawing skills are important, but there was never going to be a shortage of talented artists in the world who lacked an audience. In addition to storyline, a good manga also had one more deciding factor. That was the storyboard layout!
No matter how great the story was, or how talented the artist, if the storyboard wasn’t strong, a manga’s quality will decline significantly.
What was storyboard ability?
It’s when a story was told well, so the audience would want to keep reading!
Storyboarding skills were very important. Otherwise, excellent drawing skills would only make you an illustrator, and a great story was just a pile of rubbish!
Goro Takahashi could tell that the drawings in front of him contained superb storyboarding. It was simple, powerful, smooth, but was full of creativity. Between each drawing, his mind was able to animate each scene through the way the panels had been laid out. The effective storyboarding combined the context with the story and was so clever and magical!