Chapter 89: Anime for the sake of a TV drama

  By the way, Zhou Xiao actually has another job, which is not small either. Don't forget, he's the male lead in this movie.

  As for Zhou Xiao's acting skills, it's impossible to say they're good. As for directing, combining his past life and current life experiences with crash learning and the external plug in his brain, these four reasons together made him barely dare to try directing a play, but if he were to make a movie, his past life and current life would only have experience watching others act. In this case, if Zhou Xiao could come up and act exceptionally well right away, that would be a bit exaggerated.

  So, when filming his play officially started, Zhou Xiao made several jokes and wasted a lot of time. Fortunately, this was his own investment project, so every time he made a mistake, Nagata Kotaka would shout: "Don't mind everyone, losing money is also losing his own."

  With a room full of laughter, Zhou Xiao had no choice but to continue awkwardly playing her own role.

  The movie starts with Zhou Xiao appearing for a short time, mainly as the image of dumping Aya. From this point on, Zhou Xiao's role is a combination of the senior boyfriend in the TV drama version and Nishikido Ryo's character. Zhou Xiao dumped Aya not because of her illness but for other reasons. After dumping Aya, Zhou Xiao's character will enter his own inner journey, while the main plot moves to Aya and her mother fighting against the disease. Zhou Xiao, as an onlooker, watches this mother-daughter duo bravely yet tragically fight against the disease. Aya's illness inevitably worsens, but she never loses confidence and love for the world. In the end, Zhou Xiao's character deeply falls in love with Aya because of her bravery and love for the world, and accompanies her through the last moments of her life.

  For Zhou Xiao, the first part of the film was just a warm-up, and most of the middle section was spent observing with a poker face. The real test came at the end, in that conversation with Aya, aka Kyoko Miyazaki, who didn't need to say anything because she could barely speak at that point. Zhou Xiao had to use long monologues to convey his reluctance and pain while also matching up with Miyazaki's performance, which was a very difficult challenge.

  It can be said that Zhou Xiao has been preparing for this final challenge from the very beginning, and all previous scenes were prepared for this last scene.

  There are usually two modes of acting, one is that the actor knows he's acting and relies on his acting skills to portray another person, the other is to directly try to become another person. As someone who hasn't experienced real acting before, Zhou Xiao would probably find it difficult to deliver movie-level acting if he did the former, so he can only try to immerse himself in the role when acting, and truly love Ah Ya as a strong girl.

  If Zhou Xiao had only taken on this role, he might have had time to fully immerse himself in it, but with other work to do as well, Zhou Xiao didn't have that much time to focus on acting. With no choice, he could only start immersing himself in the role the day before filming, while trying his best to put his own ideas into it. As he did so, Zhou Xiao muttered to himself: "I'll never act again in this lifetime, it's simply... simply... soul-destroying."

  Apart from acting, Zhou Xiao is also doing another thing related to animation.

  Japan's anime industry is very powerful, extremely powerful, but this does not mean that if you like Japanese things, you will definitely like Japanese anime. Some people just don't have much love for Japanese anime.

  Zhou Xiao is that kind of person, he doesn't dislike watching anime, it's just that he watches relatively little. Within a year, the number of new anime he has watched is only about two or three. He also doesn't follow any anime singers or voice actors and isn't particularly enthusiastic about Japan's entertainment circle. So unless necessary, he doesn't plan to enter the Japanese anime circle. Of course, it's impossible for him not to enter at all - although the anime circle and entertainment circle are two different circles, there is some overlap between them. For example, Zhou Xiao's recent work is a case in point: the anime "Symphony Dream" is finally about to start production.

  During the time Uncle Inoue flew to Shanghai, the company's daily operations were handed over to Chief Agent Watanabe Keiko. Apart from daily tasks, Zhou Xiao also entrusted her with another important matter regarding "Symphonic Dream". Firstly, he got rid of Watanabe Keiko and found Ninosaka Chizuko, who is currently serializing a manga on Shonen Jump, to ask if she was ready to end this manga and had any ideas for new ones. The final message Watanabe Keiko sent to Zhou Xiao was that Ninosaka Chizuko hadn't started thinking about a new manga yet, which made Zhou Xiao feel at ease. Then he began asking Watanabe Keiko to find someone who is good at drawing shoujo manga and doesn't mind collaborating with others. After searching for some time, this person was finally confirmed recently.

  On the day of meeting with the female cartoonist named Yaguchi Akira, Zhou Xiao gave everyone in the crew a holiday. As for the shooting task, he was not in a hurry. Now starting from Akita, according to Zhou Xiao's plan, this film will be released until next spring, so time is very urgent.

  Being a female manga artist sounds like a pretty good profession, and if this female manga artist is also a cute girl then that's even better. Unfortunately, not everything in life is always good news, and this woman named Yaguchi Aki...

  Zhou Xiao couldn't help but think in her heart the moment she saw Yajing: "Miss, are you and Shen Dianxia long-lost mother and daughter?"

  That's right, this Yajigusa is indeed a 160cm tall, weighing... perhaps even less than 160 existence.

  What a waste of such a good name!

  In the materials provided by Watanabe Keiko to Zhou Xiao, it is written that after graduating from a large animation department in Japan, Yaguchi Aki only did ordinary work of making connection animations for anime. This kind of work has been outsourced to foreign countries for many years and is no longer done in Japan, but there are still some people doing this kind of work now.

  However, Yaguchi's situation is not good. In fact, the current situation of all Japanese animators is not good. It's simple because Japan's animation industry is in a period of transformation, which started from 1999 and has been gradually phasing out traditional cel painting in favor of more advanced techniques such as computer-generated imagery. This major transformation has actually eliminated many older people who are slow to react, and Yaguchi may be one of them.

  She wasn't unwilling to learn new ways of drawing, but under the circumstances where she reacted a bit slowly, after learning the new way of drawing, Yaguchi Akira found that there weren't many things that suited her to do. Having no choice, she had to look for other possible ways to make money, and that's when Watanabe Keiko found her and recommended her to Zhou Xiao.

  Looking at the young and handsome eighteen-year-old boy in front of her, Yaguchi Akira, who was almost thirty years old, was unusually shy. She was a super-rich otaku girl, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to raise herself so plump. But even an otaku girl has a girly heart, and facing Zhou Xiao, who had appeared on screen very little in this period of time but still had a lot of charm, Yaguchi Akira couldn't help but feel a little shy.

  "I heard you're quite familiar with classical music?" Zhou Xiao asked.

  "Huh? Yes! I practiced piano for seven years when I was a kid, and my mom is a violinist, so I've been exposed to a lot of classical music since I was young." Yaguchi Akira replied hastily, which was actually the real reason Watanabe Keiko chose her.

  Zhou Xiao suppressed the urge to watch those small chubby hands play the piano and continued, "What if I give you an outline, an outline that describes a shoujo manga with classical music as its main theme, do you have confidence in drawing it?"

  "Classical music? Shoujo manga? I think it should be fine!" Yaguchi Akira didn't have much time to think about Zhou Xiao's diverse interests and hastily replied, after all making money was the top priority.

  "That's good, I have a good outline and part of the story here, you take a look. As for the division, the comic animation and the derivative products of these two will be divided equally, but the adaptation rights, film and television adaptation rights should all belong to me, okay?" Zhou Xiao asked.

  "Alright! No problem!" Yaguchi Akira hastily agreed. Such a good thing, how could he possibly refuse?

  PS, will be on shelves tomorrow. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, three days, five updates per day would be better...