Chapter 15 – Young Scriptwriter

It took these three men ten minutes to finally calm down. Before they all left to do their job, Kira remembered a certain thing Toma Yuu said to them just now.

"Mr. Toma, you mentioned that this reminded you of your past, can you maybe tell us more about it?"

Joshua at the mention of that perked his ears up, as he was also unfamiliar with that.

Toma Yuu returned to his usual serious self, but he looked a little bit more relaxed and he didn't have anything against saying a little bit about himself.

"Hmm, I guess I can tell you a little bit about myself, this can also serve as a lesson to you young boss. So, let's see, where to start…"

…

I would say the story started twenty years ago when I was just a young and inexperienced brat. With that said and not to sound arrogant, from a young age I knew how to write and I knew how to do that really well. So, I decided to combine my two passions, writing and anime.

I got a job at a prominent studio and after a couple of years, I finally got the chance to show to my bosses my ability. After being an assistant to the senior scriptwriters, my boss at that time gave me a mission to write a script for the anime they were planning to make.

That anime was an adaptation of, at that time famous manga. You can guess how excited I was. The whole time I was jumping around with a smile on my face, it was here, finally it was here, a chance – it was all I needed.

So, the work started and let me tell you gentlemen I read that manga more than a hundred times so that I could better understand the story, as I flashed up my ideas and started writing.

At that time as a newbie, I didn't have many friends in the studio, just a couple of guys that I talked to during the break.

Those guys when they saw me all excited tried to use I guess their experience to help me create a good script and I accepted their help because to me they seemed like genuine people.

I finished the script and gave them a chance to read it. There were about four guys curled over the table reading the script and they started arguing. Boy, at that time I was confused and scared because I thought I did something wrong.

While arguing they were telling me what to fix, using their experience as a reason why I should listen to them. Amongst them, there were two scriptwriters and two animators. I was confident in my script but with so much pressure I was feeling, I decided to listen to them and I corrected the parts they highlighted after they stopped fighting.

Even with this new script, to me it didn't look that bad, if it did, I wouldn't submit it even if I was pressured.

To make this already lengthy story shorter, I submitted the script to the boss and he hated it, actually, he was furious and looked extremely disappointed. You can guess how I was feeling when he started telling me what parts were badly written and of course, most of those were the "corrected ones". In hindsight maybe it was my fault because I myself didn't find anything that wrong with it and maybe I thought some parts were even better than the stuff I had originally written.

But the thing is, every boss has their own taste and the way those parts were presented and written was something that boss didn't like. I didn't know that but those four did.

Before making things worse before the boss, I confronted the fantastic four and they acted like they didn't know what I was talking about and in the end, those fucking bustards dared to put all the blame to like they said back then "my poor writing ability". That was the first time I experienced the dirty part of our world. I trusted the wrong people, I wanted to believe that they just wanted to help me.

Later I found out that those two scriptwriters were jealous of me because I was a young and up-and-coming scriptwriter who quickly got the chance to write my first script, so they with their two friends decided to mess with me.

Of course, you are probably asking me if I just passed over that, and you can probably guess the answer, back then I was even more prideful, so yeah, I said everything to the boss, who unfortunately for me didn't trust me. He accused me of lying and being shameful, he said that I was trying to put the blame on other people for my failure. 

Naturally, he fired me and my reputation in the industry plummeted. From that point on I went from studio to studio, clashing heads with everyone, as my reputation became so infamous that nobody wanted to give me a job. A couple of months ago I was close to quitting, before, Kira-san, your father decided to take me in, I owe him quite a lot, that's why after his passing I stayed…

…

With a small smile on his face, this now already seasoned scriptwriter said his last sentence and closed the story of a young scriptwriter.

"And clearly in a sea of bad decisions I made, this was the best one."

Finally, like it was for the animation studio, a new page, this time also a brighter one opened in the story of Toma Yuu.