With the creative rights for Higurashi: When They Cry, Summer Time Rendering, and No Game No Life delegated to other mangakas under his supervision, Rei’s direct creative obligations for the year narrowed to two properties: Attack on Titan and Your Name.

For someone in their final university semester with essentially no remaining academic requirements, this was a manageable load.

The Attack on Titan manga had Rei as lead artist, but backgrounds and the large volume of repetitive structural work were handled by a team of assistants. His hand speed made the remaining workload comfortable rather than pressured.

The serialisation contract with Hoshimori Group had been finalised.

Hoshimori had arrived at a realistic understanding of their position. Any Shirogane property would, in its later stages, develop into an IP valued in the hundreds of billions of yen.

The copyright structures they had tried to negotiate in the early years of their relationship were simply not available anymore, and insisting on them would have ended the relationship entirely.

What they could offer Rei was the serialisation platform, the established distribution infrastructure, and the circulation reach of Dream Comic Journal, which Rei’s manga had spent two years restoring to its position as Japan’s number one manga publication. This was worth having. It was also the full extent of what they could realistically expect.

For Miyu, the announcement of the relationship had produced a different effect. Within two weeks, Hoshimori Group had proactively revised the terms of her cooperation contract. The copyright shares, tankōbon revenue allocation, and licensing terms were all updated to the highest tier in the industry.

This was not altruism. It was the Hoshimori Group communicating to Rei, through the most concrete available mechanism, that his girlfriend was valued and would be treated accordingly.

They were aware of something that concentrated their focus considerably. The other five of Japan’s six major manga publishers contacted Rei on a near-monthly basis with escalating incentive packages.

The question of why Rei remained with Hoshimori Group had one primary answer. Miyu Yukishiro was a top mangaka under the Hoshimori umbrella and was also his partner. That single fact was the most durable competitive advantage Hoshimori possessed, and everyone involved understood this.

March passed.

The weather in Tokyo moved through the specific transition from winter’s final holding pattern into the warmth that meant something had actually changed.

April arrived.

The spring anime season opened across the first five days of April with more than eighty series launching across multiple time slots on multiple stations. The premieres were distributed across Saturday, Sunday, and Friday primetime, with smaller and mid-budget productions filling late-night slots across the early weekdays.

Thursday was empty.

Not by accident. Every station across Japan had developed an operational understanding over the past two years: the Thursday 8:00 to 9:00 PM slot, specifically, was not a viable launch window for any other production.

The combination of Rei’s scheduling pattern, which tied his anime premieres to the Thursday night slot to coordinate with the associated manga serialisation in Dream Comic Journal, and the scale of the audience that coalesced around that slot on his premiere nights, made Thursday night competition simply not worth attempting.

This arrangement suited everyone. Rei was not occupying weekend primetime, which was the slot his peers needed to compete for. His peers were not facing the specific disadvantage of premiering opposite a Shirogane production. The industry had arrived at a workable equilibrium through mutual self-interest rather than explicit negotiation.

The first five days of April produced their results. The weakest premiere of the season was a late-night sports series at 0.67 percent. The strongest was My Holy Sword!, a fantasy isekai adapted from a game, at 5.34 percent.

Every animation fan in Japan understood that these numbers were the opening acts.

The main event had not appeared yet.

April 6th. Thursday.

The difference was visible from noon.

Trending topics related to Shirogane-sensei and Attack on Titan were appearing and climbing across every major platform without any involvement from Shirogane Animation’s operations team. This was the organic behaviour of an audience that had been waiting for a specific date and had reached it.

"Finally. It has been a month and twenty days since the last Shirogane-sensei work."

"The Infinity Castle arc film has one more week in theatres. You could go watch it again."

"I have seen it five times. I genuinely cannot watch it a sixth time. It is excellent. I am done."

"Current Demon Slayer box office: domestic 92 billion yen, overseas approximately 48 billion yen, global combined approximately 140 billion yen. There is no reasonable case for another film taking the annual domestic box office championship."

"What about Your Name releasing in July? Are you forgetting that Shirogane-sensei made Five Centimeters Per Second and Tonight? His romance work capability is established."

"A romance film without an established series foundation is a different commercial animal from a sequel to a property with tens of millions of active fans.

Even for Shirogane-sensei, 12 to 14 billion yen domestic would be a strong result for a standalone romance film. The first Demon Slayer film reached 60 billion because the television series had built that audience. The second reached 80 billion because the audience had grown further in the intervening months. Your Name does not have that runway."

"I like Shirogane-sensei’s romance work. I am also not particularly motivated to see a romance film in the cinema. These two positions are compatible."

"Five Centimeters Per Second as a live-action film produced 6 to 8 billion yen at the time, and Shirogane-sensei’s fame is ten times what it was then. But can he produce a romance work that surpasses Five Centimeters Per Second? That original set a standard that most romance productions never approach."

"Whatever the final number, it will not be as low as 12 billion. A standalone Shirogane-sensei romance film has a floor that most productions cannot reach regardless. The ceiling question is the interesting one."

"Can we stop arguing about a film that releases in three months and talk about the anime that premieres in four hours."

"Yes. The relevant question for today is whether Attack on Titan can reach the popularity level of Hunter x Hunter. Demon Slayer is a different category. Demon Slayer is a phenomenon. Matching it is probably not on the table."

"Hunter x Hunter’s level is the realistic target. That would still make Titan one of the most significant anime of the past decade."

"Titan has a fundamentally different audience profile from Demon Slayer. It is not competing for the same viewers. Comparing their popularity peaks is like comparing the box office of two films in completely different genres."

"This is a reasonable point that will not stop anyone in this conversation from making the comparison anyway."

"Correct."

Rei’s fan base had always contained the full spectrum of positions. The Demon Slayer faction. The Hunter x Hunter faction. The One-Punch Man faction. The Hikaru no Go faction.

Before the first episode of any new work aired, these groups were already arguing about where the new property would fit in the ranking and what its arrival meant for their preferred work’s position.

The arguments generated heat and that heat generated trending topics and that was ultimately the mechanism by which Attack on Titan had spent the past several hours occupying the top positions on every major platform in Japan without Shirogane Animation’s operations team spending a single yen to put it there.

The afternoon passed into evening.

From seven o’clock, the Ion TV ratings began climbing.

The station had given the Attack on Titan premiere a specification that communicated how seriously they were treating the event. Starting at seven, they ran a variety programme featuring the full production team, with the notable exception of Rei himself.

Himari, the chairwoman of Illumination Production Company, and Misaki, the CEO of Shirogane Animation, were both present in the studio for interviews.

Most of the content was the standard promotional format: general discussion of the production process, carefully managed enthusiasm about the upcoming episode, nothing that approached actual plot information.

The industry understood that spoilers from the production team generated more damage than benefit and both women knew where the line was.

At the end of the programme, they left exactly one substantive statement.

"Attack on Titan is a genuinely subversive anime. And it is tragic. From the very first episode, it is very tragic."

Nao Fujita was eating a popsicle and watching this exchange with the specific expression of someone who has decided in advance that what they are about to hear will not affect them.

She had been following Shirogane-sensei’s work since Five Centimeters Per Second. The body of experience she had accumulated across that period had produced a resilience that she felt confident describing as complete.

The train scene in Five Centimeters Per Second. The male lead’s death in Tonight. Sai’s departure in Hikaru no Go. The Ant King and Komugi’s mutual end in Hunter x Hunter. The Flame Hashira. Shinobu Kocho. Akaza and Koyuki.

Her capacity for being ambushed by a Shirogane-sensei emotional development had been tested repeatedly across seven years and had not survived a single test intact, but the cumulative effect had at least produced a specific kind of preparedness. She went in knowing. She cried anyway. But the knowing was something.

Tragic from the very first episode.

Himari and Misaki saying this on television was the most unnecessary statement either of them had made in a professional context. Was there a Shirogane-sensei work that was not tragic?

She could work through the catalogue systematically and the answer was consistently no. Even One-Punch Man had Garou, who had trained himself to the absolute limit of human capability and found that limit was still nowhere near enough.

Even One-Punch Man had Boros, who had crossed the universe for decades searching for a worthy opponent and found one fight at the end of it before dying. That was tragic. Every Shirogane-sensei work was tragic, because every Shirogane-sensei work was honest about what people lost and what that cost them.

Himari and Misaki warning the audience that Attack on Titan was tragic was like warning the audience that it would contain animation.

She finished the popsicle and set down the stick.

Eight o’clock arrived.

The Ion TV screen paused for a moment.

Then the Attack on Titan opening theme began.

Guren no Yumiya filled the room.

...

STONES PLZZ

Read upto 50 Chapters ahead at [email protected]/Ashnoir