After visiting Kyoji Mizushima, Lin Zhiyan went on to meet with several industry veterans.
Most of them were the real-life figures who had inspired characters in the original work.
After all, Lin Zhiyan had worked at IG for five years, and Kenji Horikawa, the president of PA, had also worked at IG. Since Lin Zhiyan himself could now be considered a veteran of the industry, there was a significant overlap in the people they knew.
However, not all the figures who inspired characters in the original work were personally known to Lin Zhiyan. For a small number of these roles, he found substitute actors to play them as a favor.
Obtaining the necessary licenses took Lin Zhiyan several days to complete. Afterward, he handed the character design work to Sekiguchi Kanami and took the rest of the team to scout locations.
In March, Shirobako began its voice auditions.
Since everyone knew this was Lin Zhiyan's new animation and he hadn't specified which voice actor should play the main character, over two hundred voice actors—both established stars and newcomers—showed up for the auditions.
Among them were voice actors he had worked with before, as well as many whose names he had never even heard.
Unable to secure the original voice actors for the main female characters, Lin Zhiyan had to rely on instinct. Any voice actor who passed the acting test and whose voice sounded pleasant made it through the initial screening. He would then schedule further auditions to confirm the final cast, considering their availability and other factors.
At the end of the month, A Certain Scientific Railgun Season 1, which had been airing for six months, came to an end.
The anime's opening and ending themes were highly praised, the production quality was consistently solid, and it created numerous iconic memes and memorable scenes, including the "computer parts" gag.
As expected, the reception was overwhelmingly positive. The average disc sales per volume steadily exceeded 30,000 copies, even surpassing A Certain Magical Index. The moment the series concluded, plans for Season 2 were already underway.
In April, L.S Produ released two anime: K-On! Season 2 and Your Lie in April.
Both series heavily featured music, and both were half-year series. However, K-On! aired on TBS, catering to a niche otaku audience, while Your Lie in April aired on Fuji Television's Noitamina block, targeting a broader audience. One focused on modern music, the other on classical; one offered comfort, the other dealt with depression.
K-On!, the second season of the popular IP, naturally continued to be highly favored within the otaku community. Your Lie in April, on the other hand, quickly gained attention after its debut due to its exceptional production quality, outstanding soundtrack, beautiful art style, and literary dialogue. It rapidly accumulated a dedicated fanbase among noitaminA viewers and built significant popularity.
The two anime did not premiere on the same day, and their promotions were handled separately. However, many viewers enjoyed both series and inevitably compared them.
At the start, no one could have imagined that the main characters in K-On! would graduate from school, nor could anyone have anticipated that Your Lie in April would be such a depressing anime.
During the height of their popularity, Lin Zhiyan continued his usual work of overseeing all animation reviews within the company. The production of Shirobako also progressed smoothly. However, most of his time and energy were actually devoted to another project: establishing the mobile game company L.S Games.
When galgames were at their peak, Lin Zhiyan hadn't established a galgame company for several reasons.
Firstly, galgames are text-based adventure games, and their success largely depends on the story—on the words.
Lin Zhiyan could remember the content of every anime he'd watched, having seen countless shows. But he hadn't played many galgames, and even for the ones he had played, he couldn't remember them in full. In such a situation, it was impossible to recreate them.
Moreover, at the time, he was busy working on animation and had little time or energy to devote to galgames.
Another factor was that while galgames were popular around the year 2000, they began to decline in the 2010s. The companies making galgames were small studios, and without breaking out of the galgame niche, they couldn't grow into major game developers.
Since he had already invested in Type-Moon, there was no need to duplicate his efforts by starting another galgame company.
Now, Lin Zhiyan was focused on mobile games, not galgames, and the situation was completely different.
While story is important in mobile games, gameplay and the attractiveness of the characters are even more crucial. There's no need to remember the entire game, and Lin Zhiyan doesn't even need to be involved in the development process; just guiding the overall direction is enough.
Setting up the company initially would require a significant investment of time, but once the framework was in place, Lin Zhiyan wouldn't need to spend much time on it, leaving him free to focus on animation.
[ Angel Beats! ]
On the other hand, the period from 2010 to 2012 was considered the golden window for entering the mobile game market. Before that time, the market was stagnant, while afterward, it became fiercely competitive. Only during this brief window was it relatively untapped, and with sufficient capital and the advantage of a reborn person's memories, developing mobile games was practically guaranteed to be profitable.
Of course, there was still a possibility of loss, but in the ten years since L.S Produ's founding, Lin Zhiyan had earned vast sums from animation. His idle funds alone amounted to over ten billion yen.
He wasn't interested in investing in stocks or the stock market, so he needed to find other ways to deploy his capital.
The core of his business would always remain animation—both now and in the future. Given this, any new ventures would need to revolve around animation.
With a clear direction in mind, the options narrowed significantly: he could either develop games, acquire a publishing house, or purchase a record company or voice actor agency.
As for video streaming platforms or television channels, those markets were too complex and capital-intensive to even consider.
Compared to other options, Lin Zhiyan still preferred to focus on games.
Moreover, he wasn't blindly jumping into mobile gaming just because it seemed lucrative. He understood the industry well.
In another timeline, the Japanese mobile game giant Cygames wasn't founded until May 2011. While Lin Zhiyan couldn't remember every game they developed, he was well-versed in their development path and the success factors behind their hit games.
He intended to follow Cygames' trajectory, recruiting key figures from their future before they became prominent, and having them develop the company's future hit games, including Rage of Bahamut, Granblue Fantasy, Shadowverse, Princess Connect!, and Uma Musume.
His ultimate goal was to replace the Cygames of the other timeline and become the dominant mobile game company in Japan.
If these games could be successfully developed and operated, combined with Type-Moon's Fate/Grand Order, they would essentially dominate the mobile game market and even support their animation business.
Even if following Cygames' path didn't succeed, it wouldn't matter. The Love Live! project was already in progress, and they would still need mobile games. Having their own game company develop them would be more reliable than outsourcing to another company.
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