The Manga Works Review (chyneyee)
You start your career as a manga artist and work your way from the bottom to the highest ranking of all. From rejected mangas to millions of mangas being sold, earning merchandise copyright and even turning your manga into TV shows.
You have to manage your time to draw a one-shot or serialised manga before the deadline but also visit different places to gain extra Plot Points (PP) for your various story arcs. Combining certain story arcs will create a special story arc, such as Prologue Arc + Prologue Arc + Prologue Arc, which will create a Happy Arc. You can find the list in the guide. You can switch different rhythms of the working style from intense to chill. Be careful if you make your character work too hard, as it will drain the character's energy, and the character will end up being hospitalised, which affects meeting the deadline. The earned money will be used to buy furniture (updated monthly) for the house, and each piece of furniture has different additional points for your career, such as extra points for "Drawing" or "Novelty". As your career progresses, the character will be offered to extend the house with additional rooms, which contributes special points to the career as well. Earn XPs to train the character to work faster and increase the character's skill in drawing and story writing.
The quality of a good manga depends on the combination of types, themes, scenes, and your skills. You need to try various combinations; for example, a battle manga with the theme "alien" and the scene to use is "sci-fi". Certain combinations will give the best result, which leads to higher sales and popularity. Boring manga will get rejected by the publisher, and popular manga will earn more fans. The fanbase offers the insight of the popularity group, and each publisher has a different fanbase. Publisher X targets mature readers, but Publisher Y probably targets younger female readers. Once the publisher accepts the work and the character's reputation is getting higher, the publisher will request a manga series which requires the character to create a chapter or a story arc before the deadline (e.g., 7 days). Each publisher has different chapter requirements, and the highest are 50. Once you reach the required number of sales, the rank of the manga artist will be increased, and a bigger publisher will be unlocked as well.
This is probably the first Kairosoft game that I struggled with the most. It feels like enjoying the game in a frustrating way. I guess I'm more familiar with most of the food names in most of Kairosoft's restaurant games than technical terms and the required strategy in this game. The player needs to combine different story arcs to create a special story arc when the manga reaches a certain stage. If you are using too few Plot Points (PP) for the story arc, the manga's ranking will be affected, but if you use too many PP, it will probably drain the points and money to earn more PPs. The concept is probably creative, but it's difficult to execute to make it more interesting. Some players will feel the game seems repetitive because you have to work on the manga continuously until it triggers the unexpected event, whereas other games, such as restaurant management games, have different numbers of customers every day, and the player can see the various movements and dialogues of the customers and the daily fluctuation of sales.