"Explain to me in detail exactly what happened."
Takayuki asked calmly.
"It's like this—there are multiple directors jointly preparing this Olympic opening ceremony, right? Including me, there are three chief directors in total, each basically representing different factions. The other two are extremely troublesome. They're doing everything they can to make their own sections the core of the opening ceremony, and they're also trying to apply for a bunch of unnecessary funding."
Ono Sano was, after all, a fairly well-known director on the world stage.
He had served as chief planner and chief director for multiple large-scale celebratory events, and he was also a core creative member of several award-winning film and television productions.
Among the creative teams for this Olympic opening and closing ceremony, his résumé was the strongest.
Gamestar Electronic Entertainment had deep pockets and wanted publicity—specifically, to fully showcase its powerful hard strength in video game culture.
As for anime and Japanese traditional culture, those were actually meant to play a secondary role in this Olympics.
After all, the successful bid and planning owed much to Takayuki himself. He was the one who first proposed using popular culture to attract young people, and he was also the one who proactively offered both material and non-material resources.
All brand IP licensing was provided free of charge.
Inviting Ono Sano had gone through multiple rounds of consideration, and Gamestar had offered him a chief director position and compensation generous enough to truly move him.
Ono Sano had been very happy to accept the job.
But once he actually became involved in the preparations for the opening ceremony, troubles began popping up one after another, leaving him with a splitting headache.
The biggest issue was that there were three chief directors.
The other two were also somewhat famous in their respective fields and had very strong desires for self-expression. They didn't accept Ono Sano's authority and wanted to force their way into more management decisions, insisting on stuffing more of their own content into the opening ceremony.
After all, whoever had the largest share of cultural content in the opening and closing ceremonies would naturally rank higher among the chief directors.
Those two cared deeply about that ranking.
On top of that, they loved applying for funding under all sorts of pretexts.
Anime brand licensing fees and consulting fees for Japanese traditional culture masters could at least be justified as necessary expenses.
But those two also applied for all kinds of absurd budgets.
The director in charge of Japanese traditional culture wanted to purchase a batch of antiques scattered among private collectors, claiming they were perfect representations of Japanese tradition and would be amazing to display at the Olympics. He also wanted to spend 300 million yen hiring ten master craftsmen from different fields, having them perform live with their apprentices to showcase various traditional arts.
That part was still reasonable.
What was outrageous was that, in his funding proposal, there was also a 3-billion-yen budget for costumes, makeup, and props.
He hired multiple famous costume and prop designers to jointly design the outfits, with a single performance costume costing tens of millions of yen.
Now, if the costumes and props were worthy of the price, that would be one thing—but what left Ono Sano dumbfounded was that the initial designs from these so-called masters were, without exception, eye-searingly awful.
One particularly hellish design was called the "Japanese Cannon."
The supposed symbolism was "making a stunning debut." The plan was to fire it with a loud boom at the very start of the opening ceremony, exploding a full map of Japan in the sky, then dividing the map into regions to showcase the different traditional cultures of each area.
That single cannon alone would cost around 200 million yen.
Even hearing about the design left Takayuki confused.
Let alone Ono Sano.
The director responsible for anime culture was somewhat better. He wanted to apply for more funding to produce character props, aiming for a grand anime culture mash-up that would pack as many Japanese anime characters as possible into the opening ceremony, emphasizing diversity.
However, he was obsessed with meticulous craftsmanship, hiring hundreds of master artisans to carve every piece by hand.
From massive, movable anime character statues—more accurately, gigantic articulated figurines—
Down to the placards held by each participating country during the parade of nations.
All of these were hand-crafted by masters. Labor costs alone were approaching or exceeding one billion yen, and that still wasn't the end—they expected to make even more items.
Even though all of this could have been done with machine processing—cheaper by dozens of times and visually superior.
Ono Sano suggested exactly that.
Ono Sano was already in his sixties, older than the other two, yet he was the one who felt younger in spirit—far more willing to embrace new technology and techniques. In the video game–related segments under his control, he spared no effort in saving costs.
The other two, on the other hand, seemed determined to push the opening ceremony's budget toward the 10-billion-yen range.
Ono Sano estimated he could save at least half compared to them.
Of course, none of this funding came from Ono Sano, nor from Gamestar Electronic Entertainment—it all came from the Japanese government.
Still, Ono Sano felt deeply pained.
Why waste so much money on bizarre, pointless things?
With that much money, couldn't they do something meaningful?
But no.
They insisted on being unconventional.
They insisted on flaunting wealth, dressing it up as "showcasing Japanese craftsmanship to the world."
"Takayuki, that's basically the situation. Those two are both sharks. They're squeezing every last bit of funding they can while also trying to override our carefully designed opening ceremony plan. This is clearly disrupting the overall design. If this keeps going, rehearsals may not even proceed properly—and in the worst case, the final opening ceremony could end up being nothing more than a half-finished product."
The more Ono Sano spoke, the more agitated he became.
The more Takayuki listened, the calmer he grew.
As expected.
Just as expected.
Different world—same fate.
How many dirty secrets were buried in the Tokyo Olympics?
In his previous life, as someone from China, Takayuki hadn't known all the details.
But from scattered reports and rumors, he knew that Japan's upper leadership had "worked very hard" behind the scenes to make this Olympics happen.
At the beginning, the prime minister's vision had likely been sincere—that was why, at the end of the 2016 Olympics, there had been such a stunning preview of the 2020 Games.
Mario traveling from Japan across the Earth, appearing at the Rio Olympics to grandly announce that the next Games would be held in Tokyo.
That video had moved many people—including Takayuki.
But when the Tokyo Olympics actually opened, the greater the expectations, the greater the disappointment.
There were natural disasters and human-caused crises in that timeline, yes—but those were no excuse for these people's behavior.