Takuya Nakayama walked over, completely bewildered.
The conference room door was slightly ajar.
From inside, the sound of a jazz tape playing intensely could be heard. The drumbeats were dense, the saxophone wild, making one's legs twitch uncontrollably.
Takuya pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Good grief, the thick haze of cigarette smoke nearly knocked him off his feet.
The long table was piled high with discarded storyboards and design sketches, a mess that looked like a dog's kennel.
Shinichiro Watanabe, the director from Sunrise, sported a bird's nest of messy hair. A cigarette dangling from his lips, he was frantically drawing lines on the whiteboard with a red marker, muttering to himself.
Standing beside him was screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, who was biting her nails as she stared intently at the character sketches on the wall.
And Hideo Kojima—Sega's ace game producer and a director worth ten million—was currently clutching a thick stack of celluloid sheets, sweat pouring down his face as he ran over from the printer.
"Director Watanabe, the revised C-cut is here!"
Hideo Kojima carefully placed the cel sheets on the table. Then, grabbing a nearby rag, he wiped a coffee stain clean with a single, fluid motion.
The movement was so practiced it seemed he'd done it hundreds of times before.
Takuya Nakayama stood in the doorway, completely dumbfounded.
What the hell?
Sega threw a fortune at you, gave you all the resources you needed, and let you direct Sunrise's project to fulfill your cinematic dreams. And here you are, playing waiter and janitor for someone else?!
"Ahem!"
Takuya cleared his throat loudly.
Everyone in the room froze.
Kojima spun around, saw Takuya, and jumped. He dropped the rag as if it were a hot potato and frantically wiped his hands on his pants.
"M-Managing Director! What brings you here?"
Takuya strode forward, pulled out a chair, and sat down with his legs spread wide, giving Kojima a wry smile.
"If I hadn't come, I never would have known that Sega's star director was moonlighting as a janitor at Sunrise. What's the matter? Is Sega's salary not enough for you? Do you need to earn extra cash on the side?"
Hideo Kojima's face flushed red. He scratched his head awkwardly, looking like a child who had just been caught doing something wrong.
Shinichiro Watanabe crushed his cigarette butt into the ashtray and quickly offered a greeting.
"Executive Director Nakayama."
Takuya Nakayama waved a hand dismissively, pointing in the direction of Production Studio 7, where Kojima was supposed to be.
"What about your Policenauts? The team was halfway assembled, and then everyone just vanished. I just saw on the budget report that the project is suspended. Give me a reasonable explanation, or I'm cutting your pay."
Kojima pulled out a chair and sat down.
Surprisingly, he wasn't nervous. Instead, his eyes burned with a near-manic excitement.
"Sir, there's no need to run two separate projects."
Kojima rummaged through the pile of scrap paper on the table for a long moment before finally extracting a blue proposal. He pushed it toward Nakayama like a prized treasure.
"Take a look at this."
The cover bore four words: Cowboy Bebop.
Nakayama's heart skipped a beat, his pupils constricting.
Holy shit! Cowboy Bebop?!
On the surface, however, he remained unfazed, pretending to casually flip open the proposal.
"I just finalized the world-building for Policenauts last month," Hideo Kojima explained excitedly. "Space police, hard sci-fi, an adult-oriented core of trauma and loss. I was just about to start recruiting key animators."
He pointed to Shinichiro Watanabe.
"Then I ran into Director Watanabe in the hallway. He was in the middle of an argument with Nobumoto-sensei over the narrative motif for their new project."
Shinichiro Watanabe scratched his messy hair, looking a bit embarrassed.
"We were stuck," Watanabe chimed in. "We wanted to tell a story about bounty hunters drifting through space, blending Westerns, mob movies, and the rhythm of jazz. But the male lead's backstory never felt fleshed out enough—it was missing that final, crucial spark."
Hideo Kojima slapped his thigh, nearly spitting as he spoke.
"The moment I heard that, I thought, This is exactly what I'm trying to make!"
Kojima gestured wildly, completely lost in his story.
"I showed them my Policenauts setting—the zero-gravity action sequences, the protagonist's trauma from past betrayals, that end-of-the-century decadence. It was a perfect match! A match made in heaven!"
Takuya Nakayama turned another page of the proposal in his hands.
Spike, Jet, Faye, Ed.
The names leaped off the page, all too familiar.
As a transmigrator, Takuya knew all too well the weight of this work in animation history.
Hideo Kojima and Shinichiro Watanabe? What kind of god-tier lineup was this?!
"So you just scrapped your own project?" Takuya closed the proposal, suppressing his excitement as he stared at Kojima.
"It's not just about the overlapping themes," Kojima said, his smile fading as his tone turned uncharacteristically serious. "I spent three straight nights talking with Director Watanabe."
"His intuition for shot composition and music synchronization... he's a true genius."
Kojima candidly admitted his own shortcomings in certain areas, without a hint of jealousy.
"When it comes to making games, I know my stuff. I'm a professional. But when it comes to animation—using still frames and a limited frame rate to express that kind of ultimate romance—Watanabe is far superior to me."
He pointed to the storyboards on the wall, his eyes gleaming.
"If I insisted on making Policenauts, the final product would, at best, be a second-rate Hollywood imitation."
"But if I integrate my ideas and my storyboard logic into Cowboy Bebop—"
Kojima clenched his fists tightly.
"It will absolutely become a masterpiece that goes down in history!"
Takuya Nakayama watched Hideo Kojima.
Kojima wasn't clinging to personal credit or the vanity of being the director. He was willing to join the team as an assistant—even help wipe tables—just to create something great. This purity was rare, and it was exactly why Takuya admired him most.
"What does Sunrise think?" Takuya turned to Shinichiro Watanabe and Keiko Nobumoto.
"We're all for it!" Watanabe grinned. "Kojima-san's understanding of visual language is incredible. He's helped us solve so many dead angles in the major action sequences. The space dogfight storyboards he proposed are absolute strokes of genius!"
Keiko Nobumoto nodded in agreement. "The suspenseful narrative structure Kojima-san provided has elevated the script's depth significantly."
The two sides were in perfect agreement, their visions merging seamlessly.
Takuya tapped his fingers on the table twice, a confident smirk playing on his lips.
"How much of the budget Sega allocated for Policenauts is left?"
Kojima blinked, then recited a figure. "Most of it's still there, basically untouched in the account."
"Good. Transfer half of it to Cowboy Bebop," Takuya decided instantly, without batting an eye.
Silence fell over the meeting room for a heartbeat.
Watanabe snapped his head up, the cigarette clamped in his hand trembling slightly.
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