After the first week of the New Year box-office season passed, the earnings of most films in theaters began to fall sharply. Productions that had previously broken the one-billion-yen mark in a single day were now barely holding on at a few hundred million.
But among them, Your Name was clearly different.
On weekdays, its daily box-office gap with films like The Wooden Man was not especially large. Yet whenever the weekend arrived, it would always draw in another massive wave of viewers, pushing its daily earnings past one billion yen once again.
The situation was strikingly similar to what had happened when Your Name premiered in Japan during Sora's previous life. Back then, even two months after release, it had still remained the weekly and daily box-office champion across the country.
Besides the film's high quality and the natural appeal of its premise, there was an even more important reason behind that endurance.
It was an animated film.
And when fans of animation truly acknowledged the value of a work, they were far more likely than live-action audiences to watch it twice, three times, or even more.
In Japan, two weeks after its release, Your Name had already surpassed twenty billion yen in total box office. By the third week, it had crossed twenty-five billion. By the fourth week, it had broken past twenty-nine billion, and during that same weekend, it even claimed the top spot at the daily box office for two consecutive days.
Meanwhile, The Wooden Man, which had premiered in the same period, had only just managed to crawl past twenty billion yen.
By then, March had arrived.
There was no longer any suspense over whether Your Name would become the box-office champion of the New Year season. Even surpassing thirty billion yen was now only a matter of time.
Everything had unfolded so naturally, almost without any major obstacles or difficulties.
That left Sora, who had spent the entire month on guard and mentally prepared for unexpected trouble, rather surprised.
"So the people in Japan's film industry are much easier to deal with than the people in television?" Sora said from his office, looking once again over this week's performance report for Your Name. His tone carried a rare sense of relief. "If someone had stolen this big a piece of the pie from the TV stations, they would have started moving long ago. But it's been a month, and the investors behind The Wooden Man and Crazy Racer 2 still haven't made any truly excessive moves."
As for hired accounts spreading public opinion online, that did not count as an excessive move in Sora's eyes. At most, it was just normal commercial behavior.
"Of course."
After spending more than a month helping with the operations behind Your Name, Yumi smiled when she heard him.
"Do you think business warfare is like what you see in dramas? Spies everywhere, grand strategies, people outsmarting each other at every turn? In reality, most of that is fake. Real business warfare is usually someone sneaking into a rival company and overwatering their lucky money tree until it dies. Or going in and smashing the Ebisu statue they keep in the office for prosperity."
"…"
Sora stared at her blankly.
"Seriously?"
"Why would I lie to you? Back when your animation works were airing through the southern regional alliance, you were constantly suppressed by the four major TV networks and kept at a disadvantage in public opinion simply because both you and those regional stations were the weaker side of the industry. You had no real voice."
Yumi looked straight at him.
"But now, you're different. Fame, influence, capital - you lack none of them. What do you think the producers behind those New Year films can do to suppress you? Whatever methods they can use, you and the Noriko Animation group behind my family can use as well. Nobody is afraid of anyone. And the other side isn't stupid either. When facing an opponent on the same level, the only path left is to win through the strength of the work itself. Public-opinion attacks, pressure on screening slots, capital suppression… those methods only work against people with no voice in the industry. They can't be used against the current you anymore."
Sora thought about it for a moment and realized she was right.
Capital had always been seen crushing practitioners without backing.
But it was rare to see capital try to crush someone already standing at the top of the industry.
"You need to let go of that old mindset, Sora," Yumi said seriously. "In the film, television, and animation industries, you're already a major figure. You're no longer the small-time producer from a few years ago, the one whose company might go bankrupt if a single animation failed."
In its fifth week of release, Your Name surpassed thirty-one billion yen in total box office.
It also became the seventh film in Japanese cinema history to break the thirty-billion-yen mark.
That New Year season made Sora's name explode throughout the Japanese film industry.
During the same period, through Your Name and the Blu-ray sales of AD both in Japan and overseas, Sora once again earned a massive amount of emotional value.
At present, the company had more than six hundred employees. Over one hundred worked in operations and intellectual-property derivative development. The other four hundred were directly involved in animation production.
A team of that size was clearly far too large if it was only being used to produce the first season of Attack on Titan.
And at that moment, Sora began turning his attention toward some of the older works he had started but not yet continued.
Natsume Yuujinchou, for example. Or Re:Zero. Or the sequel to Steins;Gate, Steins;Gate 0.
But after thinking it over, he still did not immediately decide to produce those sequels. After all, there were too many fascinating masterpieces inside the system space, while his energy was limited.
The company was now at a crucial stage of growth. He had to break through his own boundaries. He could not simply keep walking in place.
From the premiere and conclusion of C's second season to the final stage of Your Name's theatrical run, fans in Japan and overseas had brought him enormous returns. The amount of emotional value accumulated inside Sora's system space had become truly substantial.
Of course, part of that emotional value would have to be spent to exchange for the second season of Attack on Titan.
But the second season of Titan only had a little over ten episodes. Unlike the first season, which had run for half a year, its price was much lower.
Even after that, Sora still had a huge amount of emotional value remaining.
And he certainly was not going to let that resource gather dust inside the system space.
After thinking for half an hour, Sora spent all of it on draws.
With his current fame, he was no longer too worried that this draw would lead to disaster.
After all, fortune favored the bold. Even if the result completely collapsed, once the first season of Attack on Titan aired, emotional value would fill back up again. Because of that, Sora had naturally become much bolder about taking chances than before.
The final result surprised him.
He did not obtain the top-tier commercial works he had hoped for most, those legendary franchises capable of dominating entire generations of viewers.
Instead, what appeared was an animation that, in his previous life, had not originally been created in Japan.
Arcane: League of Legends.
After thinking about it for a moment, Sora realized that this result was unexpectedly excellent.
As an animated spin-off of League of Legends, a globally famous game from Sora's previous life, Arcane had possessed influence on a truly worldwide scale.
When the animation first premiered, it topped viewership charts in dozens of countries.
Its theme song had even reached schoolyards, spreading among children until its most stirring lines became something countless students could sing from memory.
More importantly, unlike many game-based animations, Arcane had not been created merely to squeeze money out of fans.
On the contrary, in a certain sense, it had elevated the story of the original game itself, and had even won one of the world's most important animation awards that year.
At present, the influence of Sora's works was still strongest in Japan. Overseas, although he had many fans, something was still missing.
If Sora wanted to use a single work to step outside Japan and make his name known on a global scale, this animation was unexpectedly suitable.
At Yume Animation, the employees' base salaries were not low, but they were not the largest part of their income either. The real weight came from project bonuses.
Every year, after each animation project was completed, the bonuses employees received were at least three times greater than their regular wages.
Because of that, simply collecting a base salary while having nothing meaningful to do meant their income had effectively been cut by more than half.
Every day, employees sat in the office playing online games, occasionally helping the Attack on Titan production team handle tedious miscellaneous work, and then spending the rest of their time gossiping. The rare ease had seemed pleasant at first, but after a while, the idleness began making everyone anxious.
"When do you think Kantoku Sora's new work will appear? Your Name is almost at the end of its theatrical run, and Attack on Titan will premiere in half a month. We can't just stay idle like this forever."
"No idea. Honestly, Kantoku Sora's creative speed is already fast enough. That period when he was making several animations a year was never normal to begin with."
"But the company has so many people now. If Kantoku Sora slows down his creation pace, do you think we'll end up taking on adaptations of other Japanese manga, light novels, or games?"
"Who knows? That's a decision for the higher-ups. We're just regular employees, so there's no point guessing blindly. Anyway, the company is still expanding. Layoffs don't seem likely."
"I got used to those busy days, working on Kantoku Sora's interesting animations. Now that things are this relaxed, it actually feels a little strange."
While the employees chatted about Sora at their workstations, dozens of mid- and high-level staff members of Yume Animation were holding a meeting in the conference room next door.
The meeting itself was essentially Sora speaking while everyone else listened.
In the entire company, aside from Yumi and Sumire, who had already learned the general contents from Sora in advance, no one knew anything.
When Sora brought up his intention to produce the second season of Attack on Titan, no one was surprised.
Everyone present had basically read the script for the first season. They all understood that the story was still far from over. A second season was only natural.
But when Sora announced that, from this point forward, the company would invest most of its energy into producing a completely new work of his called Arcane, the expressions of the company's senior staff first turned puzzled, then gradually filled with excitement.
"As for Attack on Titan, our company's focus should not be limited to the Japanese market," Sora said, looking around at everyone present. "We need to invest far more money and effort than before into overseas broadcasting, influence expansion, and promotion in other countries."
He paused briefly, but the weight of his words remained in the air.
"Yume Animation should not be limited to influence that only reaches Japan."
Then his gaze deepened.
"As for the animation Arcane…"
"It will have the longest production cycle of any work since our company was founded. It will also be the largest investment in our history. And it will be the animation that makes the name Yume Animation resound across the world."
The moment Sora said that, the atmosphere in the conference room heated up.
If anyone else in Japan had said something like that in a meeting, everyone would have sneered inwardly.
As if the market belonged to their family. As if saying they would open the global market meant the global market would open. As if wanting to become famous around the world was enough to actually become famous around the world.
By that logic, someone might as well say they wanted to open a company branch on the moon.
Anyone could boast.
But when those words came from Sora, their meaning was completely different.
Sora never boasted.
Or rather, the things Sora boasted about eventually became reality.
That belief had long since taken root deep in the hearts of Yume Animation's employees.
It was confidence built by works like Re:Zero, Steins;Gate, and C.
And now, their own boss had said that this new animation, Arcane, would be the company's largest investment and would become a global hit.
With the boss's eye and talent, would he really say something like that without reason?
This new work called Arcane definitely had something extraordinary about it. Otherwise, there was no way the boss would show such confidence in it.
patre0n ImmortalEmperor