Chapter 165: The Tumultuous Fate of Culinary Manga

Chapter 165: The Tumultuous Fate of Culinary Manga

In general, slightly famous manga artists will choose to hire assistants to help them complete their rushed work. This is especially true for those who are serializing weekly manga, where time is tight, and the workload is heavy, making it difficult to avoid hiring assistants.

After all, if they weren't really pressed for deadlines, who would want to spend money on assistants?

But hiring assistants does save manga artists a lot of time and significantly reduces their workload.

Some manga artists, who have quite considerable income, even hire three or four assistants to help them complete their drawings.

The work of manga assistants usually involves drawing backgrounds, inking, coloring, adding tone, and placing speech bubbles—tasks that are relatively tedious but not particularly critical.

However, they rarely participate in the creation of the manga's story, plot development, or concept design. This is the primary job of the manga artists themselves.

In the industry, many manga artists believe that a professional manga artist must prioritize the story, settings, and plot design of the manga, while assistants are there to handle the other tedious tasks.

This belief is indeed true; the storyline and plot design are the main reasons a manga can become a hit.

If the story and plot are nonsensical, then no matter how beautiful the artwork is, the manga will still be considered trash.

Even if trash is sculpted into something beautiful, it's still trash.

No one likes trash.

So, many professional manga artists focus their work primarily on the story, settings, and plot design, ensuring the quality of the manga's story.

To design better stories and plots, they need to spend a lot of time on repeated deliberation. At that point, there simply isn't enough time to complete the drawing work.

However, Lin Qingshan is different since he's a "plagiarist."

Does a plagiarist need to come up with a plot?

Not at all. He has ready-made, excellent plots in his mind, and he doesn't even need to think much about the storyboard.

So, Lin Qingshan has always been able to complete his manga work alone, without needing to hire assistants.

Moreover, he has the powerful abilities granted by the system.

Under these circumstances, he even had time to complete an entire manga series, *Fire Punch*, during the serialization of *Cyberpunk Edgerunners* and *Chainsaw Man*.

However, this doesn't mean that Lin Qingshan, who can handle his primary work by himself, isn't interested in hiring an assistant. After all, having a lighter workload is always a good thing.

"No, no, no. The company actually has a few candidates for assistants," Ito Ayumi said. "They have pretty good drawing skills and are familiar with the duties of an assistant, so if you need them, the company can have them come over to your place for a trial."

"Is that so?" Lin Qingshan blinked and thought for a moment. "Alright then, but my primary concern is their drawing skills and style; everything else is secondary."

His drawing style was pretty much set during the *Cyberpunk Edgerunners* period—extremely refined, almost like an oil painting.

Since then, whether it was *Chainsaw Man* or *Fire Punch*, his drawing style has remained consistently exquisite.

After all, how can one just change their art style like that? It would definitely make people suspect that his work was plagiarized.

But fortunately, the differences in style between *Cyberpunk Edgerunners*, *Chainsaw Man*, and *Fire Punch* aren't that significant.

At least not as drastic as the difference between *One Piece* and *Detective Conan*.

Others probably wouldn't notice.

Ito Ayumi smiled and nodded. "Understood, Qingshan-sensei. The company is aware of your high standards for artwork, so they are all art students with pretty good drawing skills."

"That's good then…" Lin Qingshan nodded and said, "We can arrange a place and time for me to check their drawing skills in person."

"No problem," Ito Ayumi nodded. "I'll get back to the company and have them make the arrangements."

After discussing business, Lin Qingshan grinned and said, "Ayumi, it's almost lunchtime, so why don't you stay for a meal?"

Ito Ayumi looked at the time but hesitated slightly.

It was only a little after 10 AM, still more than an hour before the noon break at 12 PM.

Even considering the time to get back and forth, she still had nearly an hour to work at the office.

Clearly, Lin Qingshan was inviting her to slack off.

But...

Why not?

Ito Ayumi smiled and said, "Of course, no problem. It's been a while since I last enjoyed your cooking, Sensei."

Over the past few months, she had transitioned from being a novice editor. After all, she was directly in charge of the renowned Lin Qingshan. Even though others didn't know she hadn't contributed much to his manga creation, Lin Qingshan's reputation had brought her out of the internship phase.

Recently, the manga company had assigned her two new manga artists to oversee, which kept her busy.

Additionally, sensing the relationship between Lin Qingshan and Gu Qianli, she hadn't avoided him on purpose, but she did try to maintain a professional and friendly relationship with him.

[Translator: sauron]

"Great! I've stocked up on quite a lot of seafood recently," Lin Qingshan said with a hearty laugh as he took out some seafood. "This dried abalone is absolutely delicious!"

Seeing Lin Qingshan's joyful expression, Ito Ayumi suddenly smiled and said, "By the way, Sensei, with your talent for cooking, if you created a culinary-themed manga, it would surely be a big hit!"

"Well..." Lin Qingshan thought for a moment. "I do have a few ideas…"

In his previous life, manga like *Cooking Master Boy* and *Toriko* were incredibly good culinary-themed manga, and *Food Wars!* was one of the standout culinary manga in the later years.

But unfortunately, culinary manga seem to have a tumultuous fate.

Except for *Cooking Master Boy*, both *Toriko* and *Food Wars!* were abruptly canceled in the later stages.

This seems to indicate that culinary manga are destined to be short-lived...

"But I probably won't draw one," Lin Qingshan said regretfully. "Culinary manga are just too hard to create…"

"True, your current works are already excellent," Ito Ayumi nodded and smiled. "Especially *Fire Punch*... It's such an impressive manga. Sensei, you are a genius in the manga industry, and your work always makes people think deeply."

"Also, because of *Fire Punch* and the success of the *Cyberpunk Edgerunners* anime, it seems that you've been attracting quite a bit of attention from the industry lately."