Starting as a Manga Editor-Chapter 116: Huh?

You couldn’t blame Cai Quan for being that excited.
The truth was—he just couldn’t hang on any longer…
His website, AnimationFan, though it had over 200,000 users now—not exactly a small number—was still being run by a total ragtag crew… Even more ragtag than Tang Yao’s Avalon. The core team had only ten people, all crammed into a residential house. Monthly operating costs were in the hundreds of thousands, but revenue came only from ads, and that wasn’t even close to covering expenses.
Every single month, the site was bleeding money. Massive losses.
And recently, users had actually grown in number.
But Cai Quan didn’t even have money for more servers!
Sure, you could say “the future looks bright.”
But he was starving right now—who the h*ll cared about the future!?
He’d started this site out of passion. He was an old-school anime nerd. Of course, when he launched the site, he had dreams of hitting it big.
But all those bold ambitions were crushed by reality almost immediately.
Sure, there were plenty of core anime users.
But monetizing a video site had always been an unsolved problem.
And he was losing money every single day!
Cai Quan had some family wealth, but not bottomless pockets. He couldn’t just keep throwing money into a fire.
He’d tried to save himself—looked for investors. He’d found a few... but once those investors took a closer look at the site’s situation, they all shook their heads. The one guy he did convince to cough up some cash eventually ghosted him after a few months—and not before chewing him out.
“What kind of bulls**t website is this?” the investor had said. “Sure, the user numbers look decent, but your ad conversion rate is pathetic! Sales conversion is even worse. Major advertisers don’t care, and the small-time ones bolt after getting burned once!”
At this point, all they could land were adult-themed ads! Not only did those pay peanuts—they were embarrassing.
And beyond that—
The whole site relied on individual content creators posting out of pure love. Who the h*ll knew how long that would last? If users bailed in large numbers, and the site had no content of its own, what then?
This didn’t even look like something that could become a real company!!
Anyway, the so-called “angel investor” stormed off and never looked back, treating it as a lost cause.
And that left Cai Quan—completely alone, holding the line.
He kept trying to find new investors, but everyone he approached ran the moment they heard it was a niche video platform. No one believed in it.
What else could he do?
Forget ANF—even in Tang Yao’s previous life, giants like Bilibili, iQIYI, and Tencent Video all struggled with profitability. There was that famous : China’s three top long-form video platforms had burned through 100 billion yuan and still weren’t seeing profit.
They’d even tried to merge two fundamentally incompatible business models—subscription-based membership and advertising—just to squeeze more money out.
Even then, profitability remained elusive. So what hope did any other video site have?
Same thing here.
So no one was willing to invest in the fledgling ANF.
Cai Quan had used the first and only chunk of “dumb money” from that investor to convert ANF from a personal blog into a company… only to discover that step one had already become the final step. The site simply couldn’t survive.
He had no choice.
Back when Bilibili had its “Uncle” and “Auntie,” they could still distribute shares and bring in experienced professionals to help with strategic decisions.
But Cai Quan had no one but himself. Asking a shut-in anime nerd to lead a niche community into full-blown commercial success, master the art of scaling, storytelling, and eventually IPO? That was way too much to ask.
And even when he offered equity for free—no one wanted it.
He’d been stuck since step one. And now things were falling apart.
He was ready to throw in the towel.
Which was exactly why he freaked out when he saw Yuan Yanbo’s email.
He couldn’t take it anymore.
Never mind investment! You can have the whole damn site!
“...What’s wrong with you?”
At ANF’s little makeshift HQ—
Cai Quan’s face was beet red as he banged away at the keyboard, firing off his reply.
Just then, Wen Fei pushed open the door and walked in, looking puzzled.
Despite working out of a residential home, Cai Quan, as the site’s biggest “burner of money,” still had a “private office.”
Hearing her voice, he looked up and saw his cousin—and co-founder—standing in the doorway.
“They want to buy us!” he said, eyes shining.
Granted, nothing had been finalized.
But he couldn’t help blurting out his dream scenario.
“Huh?”
Wen Fei blinked, stunned for a second. Then her eyes went wide as saucers. She tossed the documents in her hand and strode over in long-legged strides. “Who? Who the h*ll would want to buy this pile of junk? Are they nuts?! How much are they offering!?”
“?”
Okay, yes, what she said was true...
But still, Cai Quan wasn’t thrilled.
That said, he had no counterargument either.
Just then, Wen Fei reached his desk, glanced at the reply email’s domain name, and read it out loud with a frown: “Avalon? Why does that sound familiar?”
“...They’re the team behind Fate/Grand Order!”
Cai Quan, as a hardcore anime fan, definitely knew what that name meant. “The game we all loved—the one that pulled in nearly 100 million yuan on its first day!”
“WHAT!?”
Wen Fei’s voice shot up a few octaves as she suddenly remembered the anime-style mobile game that had taken the internet by storm. “Aren’t they a game studio? What do they want our junk website for!?”
Cai Quan: “……”
Could you not call it junk every five minutes?
Even if… yeah, it kinda was.
And with Wen Fei’s outburst, the rest of the small team overheard too.
In an instant—
The entire ANF staff was buzzing.
Everyone swarmed Cai Quan with one burning question:
“When are we selling!?”
Meanwhile, at Avalon Studio—
Yuan Yanbo sat there staring at the reply on his screen with a weird expression.
In the end, he didn’t reply.
Instead, he stood up and found Tang Yao.
“…Miss Tang.”
“Hm?”
Tang Yao was working on the design doc for the card game. Hearing him, she looked up with curiosity. “What’s up?”
“ANF got back to me.”
“That fast? What did they say? Are they okay with the investment?”
“No, they’re not.”
“Huh? Why not? They think we’re too small-time?”
“Nope.”
Yuan Yanbo laughed awkwardly. “They said they’re not accepting investment. They’ll only accept a full acquisition.”
“…Huh?”
Tang Yao blinked slowly, visibly confused.
What the h*ll?
Did they find the wrong website or something?
ANF wasn’t small. Even Tang Yao had heard of them.
Why would they turn down an equity investment and immediately ask to be bought out?
Seeing the puzzled look on her face, Yuan Yanbo guessed what she was thinking and explained: “After I sent the email, I looked into them a bit. Turns out, aside from their original angel investment, they haven’t raised a single cent since. That means they’re hemorrhaging money every day. The capital market’s completely lost interest. The founder probably lost hope—and now he just wants out.”
“…That bad?”
“Yup. Look—”
Yuan Yanbo hesitated. Honestly, after hearing Tang Yao’s whole pitch, he had started to believe in this strategy—a niche anime community platform really could be an effective promotional base.
But now that it turned out the site was in such bad shape—and the team seemed desperate to sell—he wasn’t sure if Tang Yao would still be interested.
“Have them come here to talk.”
Tang Yao understood what he was thinking and said decisively, “But don’t act too eager… That said, let me be clear—if they’re willing to sell, we’re buying.”
A community full of core anime fans?
If they managed it well, it could absolutely become the main platform for anime-style game promotion.
The ANF team might not realize it yet, but from what she’d seen in their reply, they hadn’t grasped one key thing—
That the “G” in ACG—the game part—could be the foundation for building a whole new ecosystem, one where anime-focused video platforms could thrive by creating a distinct pathway centered on anime culture.