"President, you were away for a month and a half. These are the documents that piled up during that time. Some of them have already been reviewed and handled by Director Matsuhashi, but there are still a few that require your personal decision, so those were left for you."
After Takayuki and Misaki chatted for a bit, they officially shifted into work mode.
The moment work began, Misaki carried over a thick stack of documents and handed them to Takayuki for review.
"Sigh… the price of taking a vacation."
Takayuki looked helplessly at the mountain of paperwork.
And this was after Matsuhashi Minoru had already filtered them.
Normally, most decisions were made by Matsuhashi and several other executives. Takayuki usually only needed to be informed.
He wasn't particularly skilled at running a company anyway—leaving things to professional managers was more efficient.
On an ordinary day, he only needed to personally review one or two matters.
But after a month of backlog, seeing dozens of documents piled up in front of him was enough to give anyone a headache.
It looked like his entire morning would be spent on this.
He'd originally planned to drop by the game development department to check on progress, but that would have to wait.
Some of these documents required Takayuki's signature to confirm the next stages of theme park development.
Back when the project was approved, Takayuki had personally stated that only he could give final confirmation on such matters.
Because he'd been completely out of contact for over a month, construction at the park had temporarily paused.
Certain stages of the project simply couldn't proceed without his approval.
The Final Fantasy–themed park had been completed in 2018.
The next plan was to build the Pokémon Master Dojo.
This project was even larger than the Mario and Final Fantasy theme parks, because Takayuki planned to build at least three Pokémon Master Dojos.
In the future, these wouldn't just be amusement park attractions—they would also serve as gathering places for Pokémon fans.
Earlier, the Pokémon IP management team had followed Takayuki's suggestion and begun developing trading card games.
This product could truly be described as outrageously profitable.
A single card cost less than ten yen to produce, yet they were sold in packs of five for five hundred yen per pack.
And that was only the price for standard cards.
Premium card packs sold for even more.
At first, many people didn't pay much attention to it, assuming it was just a side product made to ride the wave.
But unexpectedly, this world embraced trading card games with incredible enthusiasm.
Children, in particular—good cards quickly became hard currency within their social circles.
Later, the IP department had a stroke of inspiration and added competitive mechanics to the cards.
Before long, tabletop card battles emerged—and rapidly became popular among kids.
All of this had started with Takayuki casually mentioning the idea.
He hadn't paid much attention afterward. He knew it would probably be profitable—just like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Magic: The Gathering in his previous life—but his main focus was always game development.
That was what he truly loved.
Even so, he hadn't expected something he mentioned offhandedly to generate such massive returns.
Eventually, Takayuki made a decisive call: expand the originally planned Pokémon Master Dojo theme park and add a Trading Card Competition Zone.
Every month, a city-level tournament would be held.
Every quarter, a regional tournament.
And once a year, a national championship.
The national champion would have their title displayed for an entire year in one of the three Master Dojos.
Anyone who believed themselves strong enough could challenge the Dojos just like in the Pokémon games—fighting their way through and ultimately facing the strongest Pokémon Master.
Victory would grant special rewards: ultra-rare official cards—and the right to replace the current champion as the new Master of that Dojo.
At present, construction of the three Master Dojos was already halfway complete.
All design proposals and adjustments had now been consolidated and placed before Takayuki for final approval.
The first issue was the final exterior design of the Dojos.
Takayuki's plan was to use modular building materials that could be easily replaced, allowing the exterior of each Dojo to change every year.
Each year, the Dojos' appearances would be redesigned based on the Pokémon chosen by that year's strongest Master.
The idea itself was excellent—but from an engineering standpoint, it was complicated.
The main issue was cost.
Using such a flexible design would be expensive, and Takayuki needed to decide whether to go through with it.
From a financial perspective, finishing the building once and never changing it would be far cheaper.
Post-construction redesigns would inevitably consume more capital.
Takayuki approved it without hesitation.
There was nothing to think about—this had always been part of the plan.
Even if costs ran high, it didn't matter. At worst, it would mean spending an extra one or two billion dollars.
For Gamestar Electronic Entertainment, that level of expense no longer counted as serious pressure.
Speaking of pressure, Takayuki couldn't help thinking about Cyberpunk 2077.
Before temporarily leaving the company, he remembered that the game's total development and marketing costs had reached roughly seven billion dollars.
Among the documents was also a notice from the Japanese government.
Once again, they hoped that Gamestar Electronic Entertainment—along with several other companies—would respond to their call to create more products centered on Japanese culture, in order to further promote it globally.
This was practically routine by now.
Every so often, the government would ask major corporations to help with cultural promotion.
Whenever a new prime minister took office, similar initiatives would appear as a way to consolidate political standing.
Takayuki lived in this country, after all.
And over the years, his cooperation with the Japanese government had been quite pleasant.
They had provided Gamestar with vast tracts of land and granted significant tax exemptions early on.
Returning the favor was only reasonable.
That said, all he could realistically do was produce a few more games themed around Japanese culture.
After thinking it over, Takayuki realized he didn't have any particularly strong original ideas at the moment.
But that wasn't a problem.
He could simply have the development teams adapt popular Japanese films or anime.
In his previous life there had been Naruto; in this world there were plenty of equivalents.
There was even a locally produced Bushidō Universe film series that had gained some international recognition—perfect candidates for licensed adaptations.
Takayuki wrote down his decisions, then moved on to the next document.