Tokyo: Earth Online Manga Artist.

The announcement was quite lengthy and seemed very serious.

As Eri Aragaki walked along, she looked at the version update announcement, still feeling somewhat indignant.

If this lousy game could be rated badly, she would definitely give it a zero-star review.

What the heck? She can't choose her gender, they just confiscated her precious treasure from her past life and randomly placed her at her birth point here.

Well, it's actually lucky that her birthplace was Japan, since she wasn't placed in Mexico or Africa.

Looking at the player panel, instead of changing her race to something like the Tyrannosaurus Rex after the season adjustments, she is now a Forest Apex, a strong race in the current version after the rework.

With a "what's done is done" attitude, Eri Aragaki had no choice but to accept this reality.

At first, she even realized that, apart from gender and birth location, her start was already quite good.

First of all, her story is basically a typical Japanese light novel protagonist's starting point: she has a younger sister, a house, and both parents are dead. She is also a beautiful and wealthy second-generation heiress.

However, being a rich second-generation is a thing of the past, because her parents died in a car accident as soon as she transmigrated.

Most importantly, their family has incurred a huge debt as a result.

First, the good news is that their family owns a detached luxury house.

The bad news is that this luxury house was a wedding home that her grandfather bought for her parents with a loan during Japan's bubble economy. After the bubble burst, the house price plummeted and the value of the property depreciated. However, the mortgage is still not paid off, with a remaining balance of 1500 million yen.

However, if Eri Aragaki's parents were still alive, this wouldn't really be a big deal.

Because Eri Aragaki's father still kept a small business left by her grandfather, which had previously been doing fairly well.

It wasn't until Eri Aragaki's parents were in a car accident and her cash flow ran into trouble that her company went bankrupt, leaving her with debts of 2000 million yen.

The family's savings dwindled to less than one million yen after their parents were in a car accident and were hospitalized for treatment, while they also incurred a debt of about 700 million yen.

After their parents passed away, all the debts fell on the shoulders of sisters Eri and Erina Aragaki.

Fortunately, Japanese law has a provision that limits inheritance.

That means applying to the family court three months after the parents' death, only needing to use the inherited assets to pay off the debts, and not having to pay off other debts.

Under these circumstances, after the auction of Eri Aragaki's house, Eri Aragaki and Erina Aragaki would only need to repay a debt of about 1000 million yen, and it would be done in installments.

This can be said to have greatly reduced the debt burden.

However, 1000 million yen is roughly equivalent to 60 RMB. This is a sum he didn't have even as an ordinary person in his previous life, let alone in this one.

However, Eri Aragaki was still lucky. With the knowledge of those parallel worlds in the transmigrator's mind, she not only had the means to pay off her debts but also the potential to reach the pinnacle of life.

What's more, there's also the player panel for Earth Online.

She directly opened the Earth Online player panel.

Player ID: Eri Aragaki

Race: Forest ape (Late Homo sapiens)

Occupation: Creator (Special Occupation of Forest Apes)

Level: 18 (Currently 0 normal skill point, 0 ultimate skill points)

Strength: 5 (5 for adult male forest apes)

Agility: 6

Physical condition: 5

Intelligence: 8

Perception: 7

Charisma: 11

Popularity (Profession-Specific): 0

Skill: Free Hands (Lv.1): Chief, Chief, I've discovered that if we just stand up, we can get two extra equipment slots!

Upright Walking (Lv.1): Chief, Chief, I have discovered that we can see much farther when we stand on our own two feet!

……

Crafting Tool (Lv.1): Chief, Chief, I've discovered that if you hit one stone with another stone and then tie a stick to it and hit the animals, they'll fall asleep immediately!

Language Communication (Lv.1): Chief, Chief, I've discovered that as long as we agree on what certain sounds mean, we can understand each other!

Boxing (Lv.1): Chief, Chief, I've discovered that if I make a rock-like shape with my hands and strike other people's heads hard, they will immediately fall asleep like babies!

Ultimate Skill: Boiling Water (Lv.1): Chief, Chief, I've discovered that as long as I use this red stuff to boil water, the water will become warm again, and I won't have a stomachache the next day after drinking it!

Professional Skill: Artistic Creation (Lv.7): Chief, Chief, I've discovered that the sound I make is particularly pleasant to hear, and I've also discovered that when I use colored water to swirl around on those big white leaves, beautiful things appear...

Professional Skill: Overclock Burst (Lv.5): Chief, Chief, I've discovered that whenever I want, a lot of things just pop into my head!

Professional Skill: Learning Ability (Lv.5): Chief, Chief, I've discovered that I learn everything incredibly fast, almost five times faster than my fellow companions!

Ultimate Job Skill: Super Creation (Lv.1): Chief, Chief, my super wisdom tells me to use Super Creation!

She focused her attention on the career options section.

The career options were originally mainly divided into three categories: predator, decomposer, and producer.

These are the three major categories of organisms in nature, which is something Eri Aragaki would naturally not choose.

As a member of the forest ape race, she can also choose a special profession.

The list of special professions is long, including rulers, sages, generals, merchants, creators, scholars, artisans, and so on.

Each special profession has corresponding professional skills and stat allocation mechanisms.

Eri Aragaki, of course, chose... the creator!

The unique mechanism of the creator profession is that you gain "popularity points" by influencing others through your works. Popularity points can be used to exchange for extra skill points and to obtain new professional skills.

There are four brand-new professional skills.

The three common skills are artistic creation, high-frequency bursts, and learning ability.

Ignoring the strange skill description, according to Eri Aragaki's understanding, it is...

The skill of artistic creation can improve the quality of creative works; the higher the level, the stronger the artistry and appeal of the work.

The Overclock Burst skill can significantly boost focus and creative speed for a short period of time, but there will be a period of fatigue after using it.

Learning ability refers to the speed at which new knowledge and skills are learned; the higher the level, the faster the learning efficiency.

Another exclusive profession's ultimate skill is Super Creativity, which enhances creative abilities in a short period of time, including painting, calligraphy, music, and other areas.

Furthermore, the rule for allocating skill points for the creator profession is that you can get 1 extra skill point for each influential work you complete.

The rule for allocating ultimate skill points is that for every 100,000 popularity points accumulated, one additional ultimate skill point can be allocated, but this can only be done once a year.

After much deliberation, she finally decided to pursue a career as a creator.

Anyway, she didn't think she had any ability to be a ruler or a wise person, mainly because she didn't have any knowledge in this area before she transmigrated.

Moreover, looking at the era she lived in, 2007, before the advent of smartphones, software, and mobile reading, she felt most out of place in this era, but it was also the last golden age of print media.

Especially since this is in Japan, where ACG culture is most prevalent, this will be the last hurrah for the manga industry.

She decided to seize the opportunity to become a plagiarist, a shameful but potentially illustrious profession.

After finally choosing to become a professional creator, she used this extraordinary method to complete her first work.

Her exceptional learning ability, in particular, allowed her to master the work of a cartoonist, a skill that would normally take most people years to acquire, in just over two months.

That's not quite right. Actually, Eri Aragaki does have some skill.

In her previous life, she was a fan of anime and manga, and she also had a talent for drawing.

Anyone who has ever been an anime/manga enthusiast knows that if you like ACG culture and have a natural talent for drawing, you will almost always try to imitate or draw your favorite anime characters.

Eri Aragaki did this countless times in her past life when she was daydreaming in class.

She even fantasized about becoming a cartoonist and learning the entire process of how professional Japanese cartoonists draw comics.

Unfortunately... the late emperor passed away before completing his great undertaking...

The awful Chinese education system perfectly illustrates what it means to shatter a career dream with just three blows. Parents, I'm just a bookworm.

Well, it's not a bad thing, actually.

It's quite obvious, after all, that while Eri Aragaki likes manga, she lacks creative ability.

Given that she hadn't even earned a single yuan writing online novels in her previous life, she would have starved to death if she drew comics.

However, this gives Eri Aragaki a good foundation, which she can now put to good use.

Eri Aragaki studied it for the past two months and then, with some kind of cheat code, she got the hang of it right away.

In simple terms, after the basic storyboard is finalized, the sketch is drawn with a pencil, then outlined with a G-pen, blackened, halftone dots are applied and scraped, the dialogue is handwritten, and then it is corrected with white ink. After that, it is basically completed.

Although she knew this was the process and had tried drawing like this for a while in her previous life, she ultimately did not become a comic artist in her previous life.

However, Eri Aragaki doesn't plan to become fat all at once; she intends to take it slowly.

Anyway, she's a cheat-like player on Earth Online, so she can take her time drawing.

And there's really no rush.

As mentioned before, she had done her research during this period.

After researching, she plans to first draw a short comic and then submit it to Shueisha's Tezuka Award. If she wins the Tezuka Award trophy and generous prizes, she will then officially become a serialized manga artist.

This time, the 73rd Tezuka Prize, the deadline was the end of May, so two months ago she made a decisive move and completed her first work while working on it.

The Tezuka Award is a new manga award established by Shueisha to commemorate Osamu Tezuka, the god of manga.

This award has been held since 1971, twice a year, with deadlines in May and November.

The Tezuka Award holds a very high status in the Japanese manga industry and is known as "the gateway for new manga artists".

Many famous manga artists debuted through the Tezuka Award, such as Buronson, the original creator of Fist of the North Star, Masami Kurumada, the creator of Saint Seiya, and Nobuhiro Watsuki, the creator of Rurouni Kenshin.

The Tezuka Award has a very strong judging panel, which invites popular professional manga artists and senior editors from Shueisha to serve as judges each time.

The awards are divided into several levels: selected, honorable mention, and shortlisted.

The highest award is for being selected, with a prize of 200 million yen; for a merit award, it is 100 million yen; and for a shortlisted entry, it is 50 yen.

The winning entries will be published in a special issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, which is a very valuable opportunity for newcomers to gain exposure.

For Eri Aragaki, the Tezuka Award has another advantage.

That is, the Tezuka Award accepts a wide range of works, not limited to shonen manga, but also gag manga, drama manga, and short stories.

This gave her a lot more options.

Furthermore, the judges of the Tezuka Award place great importance on the creativity and personal characteristics of the work, which is very advantageous for her, given her memories of her past life.

More importantly, winning the Tezuka Award will receive high attention from publishers. Once you win the award, it basically means that you can sign a contract with Shueisha and become a professional manga artist.

This perfectly aligns with Eri Aragaki's goals.

She wanted to become famous overnight through the Tezuka Prize, use the prize money to alleviate her debt pressure, and at the same time get the opportunity to serialize her work.

Eri Aragaki was aiming for a direct selection and award.

She is both a time traveler and a cheat-like online player on Earth.

She has that confidence.

Especially since the work she copied was very famous and absolutely award-winning!

That is……

Attack on Titan.

Putting everything else aside, although Attack on Titan was very controversial in the later stages, the plot in the beginning was really undeniably excellent.

As for Hajime Isayama...

All she could say was sorry, especially since she was already in a precarious situation herself.

If Hajime Isayama existed in this world.

Why do I say that?

Because she discovered that this parallel world is not necessarily exactly the same as her previous life. There are Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece, as well as Dragon Ball, but some works and manga artists do not exist.

For example... the dark fantasy action manga she loved in her past life.

Berserk.

It's not just the cartoonist and his work that's missing; some annoying guys are also gone, like that magnanimous guy.

But she wasn't sure if Hajime Isayama was still around, because Attack on Titan is an 11-year-old manga.

But as I said before, she herself is in dire straits right now, so it's a bit unreasonable to talk about conscience anymore.

The reason for choosing Attack on Titan is that its plot and setting are top-notch.

However, after some research, she learned that there are strict restrictions on submissions for the Tezuka Prize.

Here's a brief explanation of the Tezuka Award selection process, which mainly consists of four steps.

The first step is the initial screening by the editorial department. All the editors of JUMP conduct a first rough reading to filter out works that are obviously non-compliant, have more than 31 pages, or have obviously poor drawing skills.

The second step is the review, and this step involves not only editors but also senior comic artists, basically all of whom are currently active and leading comic artists.

It might sound like the main comic artists aren't that great, but actually... the names of these main comic artists are...

Akira Toriyama, Eiichiro Oda, Masashi Kishimoto, Takeshi Obata, Yoshihiro Togashi, and many more...

Together with reader representatives, the three parties carefully read and scored the works, and then conducted a final review to determine the winning entries.

Therefore, the first step is to strictly limit the number of manuscripts to 31 pages. If it exceeds one page, it will be rejected in the initial review.

There is also strict control over the subject matter, which is that it is basically all shonen manga and shonen manga. After all, this is the foundation of the JUMP system, so this is normal.

Therefore, regarding the plot of "Attack on Titan", she had to make a choice and select a good part to complete before submitting it.

Ultimately, she made her choice through her exceptional creative work.

In short, she completed the Attack on Titan artwork a week ago and sent it to Shueisha.

"I really hope the results come out soon..."

Eri Aragaki breathed a sigh of relief and said hopefully, "I think I'll be selected. If we pay off one million of the remaining two million yen in installments, not only will Erina's tuition for the new semester be covered, but we can also choose a nicer apartment to move into... and have a big meal. It's been so long since I've had barbecue..."

As she said this, she swallowed hard, as if she could smell the long-lost aroma of roasted meat.