Parallel world Manga Artist

Chapter 332 332: The Pool Gets Bigger

The Season Two finale had significantly silenced the online criticism that had been directed at Attack on Titan throughout its run.

Previously, the dominant complaint had been Eren's weakness as a protagonist. After tonight, most fans could no longer sustain the mockery.

"He is fifteen years old. That is middle school age. Why do fans online love criticising Eren for being weak?"

"Stop the criticism. After this episode I feel genuinely sorry for him."

"You can only say: while Eren is weak, in the final moment he still acted like a man. He died standing up."

"He did not die. He activated a special power at the end."

"But he was standing and throwing that punch with the certainty of death. Eren did not know he could command the surrounding Titans at that moment. So saying he faced death standing up, holding an unwavering belief, is still accurate."

"If it were me, I would probably run away."

"Could you even escape? And if you ran, what about Mikasa?"

"In this anime, some people criticise Eren for being weak, some for being reckless, but nobody criticises him for being a coward. Just based on that point alone, I think this protagonist has been developed very well."

"Season Two felt like it explained nothing again. The entire background and secrets of the story revealed only a few details. But at least now I know why Reiner's group wants to capture Eren. His Titan power is clearly far more special than anything in their arsenal."

"Reiner's group only realised something was fundamentally different about Eren when he used the Coordinate ability. Ymir too. So his basic transformation ability was not what shocked them. What shocked them was the ability to control Titans. The Coordinate Power."

"So why can Eren transform into a Titan at all? That question is still completely unanswered."

"We are probably waiting for the basement. That plot point was introduced in episode one of the first season and has not advanced since."

"Eren's father does not seem like an ordinary person either. This anime has too many foreshadowing threads. We will not figure anything out discussing it tonight. Go to sleep."

"See you next season."

"See you next season."

"I hope next season Shirogane-sensei stops being so cryptic. This plot is producing genuine anxiety."

The Attack on Titan Season Two finale marked a successful conclusion for the anime's autumn quarter broadcast.

Despite the ongoing fan complaints about the number of unresolved plot threads, even after Rei's previous works had cultivated an exceptionally discerning audience in Japan's anime community, Season Two received a very high rating overall.

After Season Two concluded, Shirogane Animation under Misaki's direction began accelerating the global IP expansion strategy for the property. The previous six months had been primarily domestic and international marketing investment to build the fanbase.

Global IP collaboration projects had been relatively limited in that period. After Season Two's reception, those activities began moving significantly faster.

The plot low point of Attack on Titan could be identified with some precision as the first half of Season Three.

The political struggle arc, which focused on revealing aspects of the world-setting through the lens of internal governmental conflict, was content that Western audiences tended to receive more readily than Japanese audiences.

The level of political sophistication depicted in the power struggle was, to put it plainly, not high. When Rei had watched Game of Thrones in his previous life and encountered the Red Wedding arc, his personal reaction had been that any reasonably aware person should have anticipated a Hongmen Banquet.

Many foreign-produced power struggle narratives assumed an audience with limited political awareness, and Attack on Titan's political arc had suffered from the same tendency.

The problem was that this section of the plot contained essential world-building information that could not simply be removed.

One could not be too harsh on the original author. He had been in his twenties or thirties while drawing Attack on Titan. The expectation that a young cartoonist in that age range would produce sophisticated political writing was perhaps unreasonable.

Therefore, in the political struggle portion of Season Three's first half, Rei made a specific editorial decision.

Since the political struggle and Armed Revolution sections were not well executed in the original, and revising them into something genuinely compelling would have required more effort than the material justified, Rei took a different approach from simple deletion.

He kept the essential skeleton: the existence of the royal government, the corrupt nobility controlling the king, the Underground Survey Corps movement working against them. These elements were load-bearing for the world-building and could not simply vanish without leaving gaps.

What he cut was the extended political manoeuvring. The multiple episodes of characters debating parliamentary procedure and aristocratic power structures. The pacing that the original had given to content the audience was not particularly invested in. The material that had caused viewers in his previous life to describe the first half of Season Three as the point where the series temporarily lost its momentum.

What he replaced it with was compression and redirection. The political situation was established efficiently rather than depicted in detail. The outcomes that the original arc had produced, the Survey Corps's changed position, the royal government's exposure, the path cleared for the truth of the world to be revealed, were all preserved. The journey to those outcomes was shortened significantly and the time recovered was redistributed to the material that actually sustained the series: the character work, the world-building revelations.

December ended.

The new year arrived.

The three days before New Year's Day were a company-wide holiday. Rei and Miyu had agreed in advance to finish their respective manuscript work before the holiday began and spend the three days as actual couple time.

This agreement lasted approximately one day.

On the first day of the New Year, Miyu Yukishiro's attention was entirely on work.

Specifically, on the weekly ranking figures for Reincarnation.

"First week of serialisation: tenth place. Second week: seventh place. Third week: sixth place in voting."

The cloud of anxiety that had been sitting on Miyu's face for the past half month cleared noticeably when the third week result arrived.

If you asked her when she was most nervous across any given week, the answer was always the moment the ranking was announced.

"Already sixth," Rei said, stroking his chin. "Second place does not seem far off. Miyu, do not forget what you said before."

"What did I say? I do not remember," Miyu said, smiling at him with a sweetness that was entirely too deliberate.

"It is fine as long as I remember. Do not try to renege."

"But the animation adaptation of my work is so slow. The manga finished almost half a year ago and the third season of the anime will not even air until July this year."

"Do you think every animation production company operates like Illumination Production Company under your command, with thousands of direct employees plus a network of supporting outsourced companies, thousands of people in service of your works?" Miyu rolled her eyes at him.

"The company responsible for animating Touch of Glass is a studio founded less than five years ago with thirty direct employees in total. They only handle the primary animation production, and over half of the key animators are temporary hires brought in for the project.

After the anime airs, at least three episodes out of every twelve in a season are completely outsourced because the company simply lacks the internal manpower to produce them otherwise. The fact that they can finish the final season by July is the result of a year of working through the night."

"But the Touch of Glass anime performance has been quite good, right? Season One ranked seventh for the quarter, Season Two ranked fifth in quarterly popularity, and Season Three ranked fourth in popular anime for the quarter," Rei said.

"It is nowhere near you, Great God. Your works consistently dominate the top spot on Japan's anime popularity chart. But even so, the vast majority of people in Japan's anime industry should be grateful to you," Miyu said after thinking for a moment.

"Grateful to me?" Rei laughed. "How could that be? I am their biggest competitor and colleague."

"You made the pool of Japan's anime industry bigger," Miyu said, looking at him and stating it firmly.

"In the past, a high-budget seasonal anime in Japan was considered remarkable if its production investment exceeded 600 million yen. But you routinely invest 1.6 to 1.8 billion yen, or even over 2 billion yen, in the production cost of just twelve episodes per season.

The same goes for animated films, with total investments often reaching 4 to 6 billion yen, and you still earn enormous profits. Especially Demon Slayer and One-Punch Man, both globally popular, the former's IP valued in the hundreds of billions of yen and the latter in the tens of billions. Seeing your success, a large amount of capital has flooded into Japan's animated film and original animation sectors, and many animation production companies have seen increased orders."

"Setting everything else aside, in the past two years alone, the number of new anime series released annually in Japan has increased by over twenty percent compared to seven or eight years ago, before your rise."

"Is that so?" Rei thought for a moment and asked with genuine uncertainty. "I had assumed my works would dry up the entire market and make it impossible for my peers to survive."

"It is not that exaggerated. The situation you described only happens when bad money drives out good, when a cluster of shoddy anime relies on heavy marketing to be forced upon anime fans, causing disgust and a loss of confidence in the industry, leading to mass withdrawal.

Your works are clearly excellent, and you are investing heavily in marketing based on that quality. Of course that expands the market." Miyu spoke about this with unusual fluency. "The more excellent works there are, the more active anime fans there will be."

Rei thought about it and concluded she was probably right.

The film industry in his previous life had demonstrated both directions. A cluster of bad movies relying on marketing had destroyed public confidence and driven people away from cinemas.

Filmmakers had called it a market winter. But good works had never faced that winter. The genuine box office hits had still performed when they arrived, because the audience had not abandoned the medium entirely, only the bad product.

"Alright," Miyu said, standing up and stretching. "Now that I know this week's ranking, a huge weight has lifted from my heart. Let us stop talking about work. Let us think about where to go tomorrow, the second day of the New Year."

"Himari mentioned there is a small county town near Tokyo with outdoor hot springs," Rei suggested with a slight smile.

"A hot spring. In that case, why do we not invite my sister? She is so pitiful. Ever since you recruited her to be CEO of Shirogane Animation, she has not had time to date at all."

"How is that related to me? She had not dated for all those years before that either."

Their voices continued alternately in the room.

For the next several days, the two of them completely set work aside and enjoyed a genuine holiday. This was the most relaxed New Year period Rei had experienced since arriving in this world.