Early May. Brilliant sunlight and rising temperatures.

For the past several days, neither Rei nor Miyu had been focused on manga or animation work. Their graduation thesis defences were beginning in a matter of days.

Miyu was an economics major and genuinely needed to prepare. There was real pressure involved. For Rei, the situation was considerably more relaxed.

Compared to his animation major classmates who had almost no professional work experience, Rei had been producing manga and animation at an industry level since high school. The practical knowledge of the animation department’s faculty in actual production was, to put it plainly, considerably below his own.

He submitted discarded footage from Illumination Production Company as his graduation project.

The school, for its part, was preparing to designate him as the year’s outstanding graduate for the animation major.

He would need to appear at the graduation ceremony, which required some coordination with the college and cost him a portion of his time. Moments like this gave him occasional opportunities to walk around the campus and experience what remained of his student life before it ended.

While Rei was handling his graduation obligations, the fifth episode of Attack on Titan aired.

Despite the slow early pacing drawing criticism, very few viewers had actually dropped the series. The discussion threads comparing Attack on Titan’s quality to Hunter x Hunter, One-Punch Man, and Demon Slayer were consistent on one point: against any other work in the current season, Attack on Titan’s production quality was completely dominant.

Thursday evening. Ion TV’s viewership began its weekly surge.

Ion TV had paid billions of yen per quarter to acquire Rei’s anime broadcast rights, and even without counting the downstream merchandise and licensing revenue, the viewership numbers alone had made those fees worthwhile many times over through advertising.

The advertising slot fees for the hour before and after Attack on Titan were among the highest in the industry.

Hina Sasaki watched the advertisements running on the TV and yawned.

She was a high school senior with the university entrance examinations one month away. Watching anime at this point in the year was not ideal. But she could not help it. Not watching would be more painful. She had been following Shirogane-sensei since Five Centimeters Per Second in middle school.

While watching the screen she was scrolling through the Attack on Titan discussion forums on her phone. Because the anime’s pacing had been slow, the most discussed topic recently had actually been Shirogane-sensei’s officially announced girlfriend, Miyu Yukishiro.

A high school classmate. That is all it took, Hina thought, with a trace of something she was not proud of.

She was aware that on the night of the announcement, many of his female fans had not taken it well. The anime community was not the idol industry though, so the reactions had been relatively measured.

Eight o’clock.

Ion TV’s screen paused. The Attack on Titan opening theme began.

Hina set down the phone.

Episode five opened on the battle between the Colossal Titan and the Survey Corps trainees with Eren at their lead. The situation was one-sided. Eren and the others could do almost nothing against it.

Even when Eren set up a genuinely striking attack position to cut the nape, a burst of heat and steam diffused, and the Colossal Titan simply vanished.

Then a massive hole was kicked into Wall Rose, the second wall.

Hina blinked.

Humanity’s three walls. The first wall had been breached years ago in Eren’s hometown, rendering it essentially useless at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Now a hole had been kicked into the second one as well, allowing Titans to enter freely.

Was the first episode’s situation about to repeat itself?

The subsequent plot was primarily setup. Commander Pyxis made his appearance. The Garrison Regiment and the nearby Survey Corps trainees, including Eren’s group, were ordered to hold the Titans long enough for civilians to evacuate. Arguments broke out among the trainees from fear.

Then Mikasa’s line, looking at Eren’s furious expression:

"Whatever you do, don’t die."

"I won’t die. There is still too much I don’t understand about this world."

Is that a death flag, Hina thought. Or is Shirogane-sensei just establishing the protagonist’s character. He would not actually kill the protagonist.

The subsequent plot of the episode slowly confirmed the bad feeling growing in her chest.

Eren’s group launched themselves into the air on their ODM Gear with determination. They moved through the air like figures out of a legend. Several of them approached the Titans with clean, impressive movements and actually managed to kill a few.

Then the scene shifted. A Titan sprang from the ground like something launched, and Hina’s remote control nearly left her hand from the shock.

When she recovered her grip, the screen showed one of Eren’s companions half-consumed by that Titan, only his upper body visible between its teeth, screaming, struggling, and then being swallowed.

Hina swallowed involuntarily.

Could this get any bloodier.

Eren and Armin both stared at their comrade’s death with terror on their faces. Eren’s expression shifted from shock into something dangerous.

"What have you done."

He accelerated through the air in a rage, ODM Gear cables firing as he wove between buildings at speed. The background blurred past him.

Hina’s emotions went with him.

Go. Cut its neck.

"I absolutely will not let you get away."

Eren closed the distance, blades raised.

Then a Titan came from the side.

It bit off one of Eren’s legs in mid-air.

He lost control and fell hard onto a nearby rooftop, head bleeding.

Hina’s mouth was open.

Shirogane-sensei. What are you doing.

Eren is the protagonist. He is lying there like a broken doll. He said he would drive every Titan from this world. He has not killed a single one and now he is a cripple.

Is this a joke.

An anime plot needed tension and reversals. But this was the fifth episode. The male lead was being made a cripple in the fifth episode.

What followed was worse.

Eren’s classmates. Three years together. The comrades who had been inspired by him and chose the Survey Corps alongside him. Males and females, one after another, hunted by the Titans. Stepped on. Eaten. Crushed and then eaten.

The Titans had a weakness. The problem was that reaching that weakness required two blades and gas-powered ODM Gear to approach a fifteen-metre creature weighing dozens of tonnes. The success rate was naturally very low. To humans, a Titan’s nape was its weakness. To a Titan, every part of a human was a weakness.

In a few minutes of plot, the anime communicated the dark reality of the world to Hina. She was not inside it and she could already feel the terror.

Then Armin’s legs gave out from fear. A Titan caught him and placed him in its mouth. He sat there on its tongue, staring blankly.

The heavily injured Eren noticed.

"Eren, what are you going to do," Hina thought, eyes wide.

Across five episodes, Eren had not had a single highlight moment. His first one arrived now.

Before the Titan could swallow Armin, Eren used the last of his strength to force himself between the creature’s teeth, wedging his shoulder against them. With one hand he grabbed Armin inside the mouth and threw him out with everything he had left.

"Armin. You were the one who told me. I am going to see the outside world."

The Titan’s teeth closed.

Eren’s arm was bitten off and fell. The rest of him was swallowed.

The episode ended on Mikasa staring into the distance and Armin watching with an expression of grief and complete powerlessness.

The ending theme began.

Hina sat with a blank expression for a long time.

The plot was undeniably good. The visuals, the fight choreography, the storyboarding, the dialogue: all of it top-tier. The final scene of Eren forcing himself between the Titan’s teeth had dissolved every criticism she had built up toward him across five episodes.

He was impulsive and sometimes reckless, but he did not only talk. When he faced a Titan he did not run.

He just did not have enough power. The gap between human and Titan was simply that large.

She had only just begun to properly like this protagonist.

Shirogane-sensei.

You killed Eren in the fifth episode. This work is planned as a year-long series. What exactly happens in the sixth.

If this was the direction the story was taking, would the reputation and viewership not collapse completely within two weeks?

In this world, there were anime that tormented their protagonists endlessly. There were no anime where the protagonist died in the fifth episode.

Many viewers who shared Hina’s reaction swarmed the major forums.

Rei’s anti-fans finally emerged.

"The male lead just died. Incredible."

"What is Shirogane-sensei doing? This episode was genuinely good. The fighting and atmosphere were excellent. But this ending cannot be defended."

"Attack on Titan is not an ensemble work either. In an ensemble anime you can kill characters freely because there is no single protagonist. But in this series Eren is clearly the protagonist."

"Is it possible Eren is not dead? He was swallowed, not killed directly. Digestion takes time."

"What difference does it make? Even if they cut him out of the stomach in episode six, he lost a leg and then an arm. Can a protagonist missing two limbs function as the male lead?"

"If he had just been swallowed I might still believe in a rescue. But a male lead missing an arm and a leg?"

"Eren is dead. Stop looking for alternatives."

"Shirogane-sensei is something else. First episode: the protagonist’s entire family dies. Fifth episode: the protagonist dies. Who dies in the sixth? The viewer?"

"The male lead announced in episode two that he would drive out every Titan. In episode five he dies without having killed a single one. The irony is complete."

"I cannot imagine how episode six recovers from this. Unless they replace the protagonist entirely."

"Is Armin the actual protagonist? Were the first four episodes just establishing his background?"

"If that is really the direction I am dropping the series next week."

"The plot has already collapsed. I can only trust that Shirogane-sensei has something planned. Maybe."

"You people treat Shirogane-sensei like a god."

"Shirogane-sensei fans love to say not a single one of his works has been bad. I would very much like to see how he salvages Attack on Titan from this."

This was the most turbulent night the Attack on Titan forums had seen since the anime began broadcasting. The anti-fans who had been unable to find real ammunition for weeks appeared in full force, and critical posts multiplied across every platform. The news media were equally unsparing, stating directly that the fifth episode’s ending would destroy the work.

And yet the viewership for episode five had risen to 6.45 percent.

The core criticism of the episode was not that it was bad but that the ending made it impossible for the subsequent plot to recover. How could a story continue without its protagonist?

But the overall quality of the episode itself was high enough to silence other objections. The atmosphere of the Titan encounters was vivid and genuinely frightening. The deaths of Eren’s comrades had left deep impressions.

And even in dying, Eren’s act of forcing himself between the Titan’s teeth to throw Armin free had moved a significant portion of the audience.

Perhaps Attack on Titan would begin collapsing from episode six. But for episode five itself, even the anti-fans could not find fault beyond the ending. High viewership followed naturally.

The question was what came after.

If this work failed in such a way and for such a reason, what collapsed alongside it would be the reputation Shirogane-sensei had spent seven or eight years building across every work he had ever produced.