He really wanted to say that this was indeed an unprecedentedly wonderful start.
As mentioned before, taking manga serialized in a weekly magazine as an example, the creation of a single chapter can be roughly divided into two parts:
Creation and storyboarding:
Specifically, this includes conceiving the direction of the main plot, character dialogue, double-page spreads, panel pacing, and even the discussions and revisions with the editor after the "name" (storyboard) is created.
This part usually accounts for about half of the total manga creation time, but due to issues like the author's inspiration running dry or the editor rejecting the original content, it sometimes takes even longer.
Drawing:
Once the aforementioned content is finalized, the next part goes without saying. It includes drawing characters, perspective, large double-page panels, backgrounds, special effects, and everything else, the part that readers actually see.
This part generally takes up half of the creation cycle as well, but it is affected by the first part, so there are rarely instances where time is abundant.
More often than not, due to a lack of time, one has to pull all-nighters to rush the manuscript. Sometimes, if it's truly impossible to finish, one can only hurriedly submit half-finished sketches and then perform a dogeza to apologize.
Considering these two parts, the role his "golden finger" could play became very clear.
First is the issue of creation and storyboarding. He could completely rely on information from the future to be a "copycat," choosing a popular future work to copy directly; he didn't have much of a psychological burden regarding this.
As long as it didn't involve adaptation or original creation, his time consumption in this part could be considered nearly zero.
As for the drawing aspect, the Original Owner's powerful drawing talent and foundation allowed him to become a human printer. Furthermore, his superb control over lines could reduce errors during the drawing process to a terrifying degree, greatly increasing his drawing speed.
In other words, if he were to draw manga, his efficiency would likely be countless times higher than that of an average serialized mangaka. He might even easily handle a weekly serialization, which leaves countless mangaka exhausted.
"If that's the case..."
Mochizuki Akira rubbed his chin and fell into thought.
It had been less than an hour since he transmigrated. He was still a bit ignorant and lost, not knowing what he could do now that he had come to this world.
However, there was one goal that was very clear and also aligned with the Original Owner's thoughts:
Making money.
As the saying goes, money isn't everything, but without money, you can do nothing.
He wasn't a person with strong desires. In his previous life, he knew his abilities were limited and he wouldn't make much money, so he could peacefully accept the status quo; his small life had been quite fulfilling.
But since he had the ability to earn more money in this life, there was naturally no reason not to.
Not to mention becoming the world's richest man, as long as he could achieve financial freedom, he would have much more confidence regardless of what he wanted to do later.
But speaking of making money, he suddenly remembered that right now, there seemed to be something far more important than drawing manga:
"...It seems like it's about time to get ready for work."
He looked up at the clock on the wall. It was already 10:30 AM. However, he was scheduled for the afternoon shift today, so he still had plenty of time.
So, he temporarily cast aside the messy thoughts in his head, washed up, ate, and prepared for work.
...
...
The Original Owner's rented address was near Nakano Station in Nakano Ward, Tokyo. It was a 20-square-meter 1K-type studio apartment. The rent was 50,000 yen per month, which was already relatively cheap for this area.
But due to Japan's bizarre rental rules, in the first month of renting, besides the rent and security deposit, there were all sorts of messy fees like key money, guarantor company fees, fire insurance fees, key exchange fees, and so on.
All these things added together actually caused the Original Owner to pay 250,000 yen in one go, directly wiping out more than half of the allowance he had painstakingly saved over the years.
Moreover, of all that money paid, except for the security deposit, the rest would not be returned.
Good grief, treating the Original Owner like a Japanese person, huh!
However, this was the norm when renting in Japan, and it remained so even twenty-odd years later.
Precisely because of this, the Original Owner had to find a part-time job to supplement the rent. Otherwise, before he could even create his first manga to submit, he would have to return to his hometown in disgrace because his funds had run dry.
Of course, even if he had money now, he probably wouldn't make it that far.
"...Cough, cough!"
Realizing he had accidentally made a dark joke about the Original Owner, Mochizuki Akira coughed twice, stepped out of the elevator, and left the apartment building.
As a gathering place for many young workers, many people in Nakano Ward, including the Original Owner, worked in other wards during the day and returned to Nakano Ward to rest at night. Therefore, the streets were relatively quiet during the day, and the level of prosperity couldn't compare to areas like Shinjuku or Shibuya.
Even so, the street scene before him still gave him a small shock.
Even though it was currently 1999, the street scene looked almost no different from how it would look twenty-odd years later.
For a moment, he even thought he hadn't actually transmigrated, until he saw the button-style mobile phones in the hands of passersby, which possessed a strong sense of the era and pulled him back to reality.
However, recalling the massive, ever-changing transformations in his hometown over the decades, and then looking at the landscape here that remained largely unchanged twenty-odd years later, he gained a more intuitive understanding of Japan's economic stagnation.
"Is this the 'Lost Thirty Years'?"
He sighed slightly and continued on his way.
Entering Nakano Station, he took the JR Chuo-Sobu Line toward Akihabara Station. As soon as he entered the train car, a sense of the era even stronger than before immediately hit him.
First, the most eye-catching thing was undoubtedly the Japanese-style "Shamate," three girls with wheat-colored skin, brownish-blonde hair, and heavy colorful makeup on their faces. They were wearing low-rise hot pants paired with super-thick platform shoes and loose socks bunched at their calves, and were covered in various small accessories. Their appearance was very impactful.
To be more formal, it would be more appropriate to call them "Gyaru."
Gyaru culture began developing in the nineties and reached its peak under the lead of the famous diva and first-generation Gyaru icon, Namie Amuro. By now, the Gyaru style seemed to have developed several different sub-genres, but the details were completely outside his scope of knowledge.
In contrast to the Gyaru style, the "Yankee" (delinquent) style was also popular among young males at this time.
The upper body was a student uniform, while the lower body consisted of "bontan" (baggy trousers) with exaggeratedly wide legs that swept the ground. The clothes and pants were covered in chuunibyou-inducing text like "Unrivaled Under Heaven," and their hair was styled into various bizarre shapes.
The Gyaru style and the Yankee style were both popular elements used by young people at the time to express youth, rebellion, individuality, and fashion. They were the two great "Crouching Dragon and Fledgling Phoenix" of the Japanese Shamate world.
It was a bit of a pity that in this train car, there were only Gyaru girls and no sign of any Yankees, so he couldn't witness the Yankees' style with his own eyes for the time being.
That being said, although the Gyaru girls' outfits screamed youthful rebellion, their behavior on the train was very well-mannered.
The three of them sat together, mostly quietly looking down at the fashion magazines in their hands, occasionally whispering and discussing in low voices. They were perfectly well-behaved.
On the contrary, the middle-aged man in a suit who had just gotten off the train was quite unsightly, shouting and cursing into his button-style mobile phone despite the poor signal in the train.
In comparison, the Gyaru girls' behavior was much more pleasant and likable.
Besides the conspicuous Gyaru, there were many other interesting elements in the train.
In May 1998, the world's first MP3 player, the MP-Man F10, went on sale in Akihabara, but the high price of 40,000 yen deterred countless people, making it popular only within geek circles.
But coming into this year, as other companies entered the market, MP3 players of various brands were released one after another. While the performance of MP3 players further improved, the originally high prices were also driven down, with the average price dropping to around 20,000 yen.
Although this price still couldn't be called cheap, it barely reached a "somewhat acceptable" level for students and young office workers.
So on the trains nowadays, one could start to see young people holding MP3 players, wearing headphones, either spacing out or slightly nodding their heads, immersed in a music world that belonged only to them.
Only, unlike the exquisite and compact MP3 players in his memory, the body of today's MP3 players was as large as a palm.
On the other side, Nintendo's legendary handheld, the Game Boy, which had been on sale since 1989, finally saw the release of its mid-generation upgrade, the Game Boy Color, last year after nine years.
Compared to the Game Boy, the Game Boy Color improved battery life and featured a color screen. Upon its release, it achieved unexpected success and became the world's best-selling handheld that year.
At this moment on the train, there happened to be a child sitting next to his mother, looking down and playing with a handheld game console.
He discreetly leaned over to glance at the game screen. It turned out to be the color version of Tetris. Seeing this, he couldn't help but smile knowingly.
The GB series of handhelds were, for him, the "most familiar strangers."
Because he had never touched an authentic GB series handheld, but when he was a child, he had saved up his allowance to secretly buy a pirated handheld and loved it dearly until his father discovered and destroyed it in a storm of rage.
It was only after growing up that he learned that the pirated game console from his childhood was exactly a clone of the GB series handhelds.
Not only that, there were also quite a few "phubbers" reading books on the train.
Most people were reading manga magazines, novels, fashion magazines, and other entertainment publications. A small number of older men held newspapers in their hands.
The scene within just one train car displayed enough of the era's spirit to make his eyes wander, but it also finally gave him a true sense of reality regarding the matter of "transmigration."
This was the end of the twentieth century, the Japan of 1999.