Over the past seven or eight years, this pattern had repeated itself too many times. So even though Bleach's early plot was genuinely loose, and even after a month of airing the viewers still could not identify the main storyline or who the central antagonist was, the fandom largely stayed patient.
They simply followed Ichigo episode by episode, watching him defeat Hollows, meet companions, and then repeat the same cycle.
What surprised Rei and many of his peers in the industry was the level of patience Japan's anime fans had developed. Very few people were jumping to criticise the plot at the first sign of dissatisfaction.
Instead, many Shirogane fans had reached a shared consensus. They were simply waiting for the moment Bleach would have its defining arc, the way episode nineteen of Demon Slayer had reversed that series' reception overnight.
April ended. May arrived.
After Miyu became pregnant, her morning sickness grew increasingly severe. But she could not bring herself to lie in bed resting all day, and she could not stand the thought of Reincarnation, the most successful manga of her career, going on hiatus.
She was confident in her talent, but she also understood the manga industry clearly. Young people eager to make their mark were everywhere. If she took maternity leave for three months, five months, or half a year, her manga's readership momentum might be entirely gone by the time she returned to serialisation. So she insisted on continuing.
Rei could not persuade her otherwise. He hired several additional manga assistants for her. Although he disliked having many people in the house, he made an exception. Several female manga assistants now lived full-time at the house to support Miyu. Whenever Rei finished his company and personal obligations for the day, he would come to the study and help her complete manuscript pages himself.
Given his current standing in Japan, Miyu was the only person in the world he would willingly become a manga assistant for.
By early April, the New Year holiday season films, Demon Slayer and My Neighbor Totoro, had both concluded their theatrical runs.
Demon Slayer achieved a global box office exceeding 120 billion yen, breaking every record set by its predecessor. The series' popularity, which had naturally softened somewhat since its theatrical peak, revived completely. Manga volume sales surged again, approaching the milestone of sixty million copies per volume.
People in Japan's anime industry had simply given up trying to conceptualise Demon Slayer's commercial value. The total sales of the manga volumes alone could reach tens of billions of yen domestically.
The revenue the entire property could generate for Shirogane Animation and the Hoshimori Group was beyond conventional calculation. And Shirogane Animation held many other active IPs alongside it. One-Punch Man games released annually.
A large-scale single-player action-adventure game based on the Hunter x Hunter world had been in development for two years and was scheduled to launch the following year.
Rei had never made any public announcement about these plans in Japan.
But people in the anime industry had seen the shape of what was being built. Shirogane Animation, as an IP operation company, was constructing an anime empire both domestically and internationally with the Shirogane brand at its core.
On a global scale, no one could replicate it. It was still in its early stages, but the final form it was building toward would resemble an enhanced version of the combined entity of a major publishing house and a dominant gaming company from Rei's previous life.
If only the overseas market was considered, the works Rei had brought to this world generated comparable results to what they had achieved in his previous life. But in terms of domestic market scale, Japan was considerably larger.
In mid-May, Rei approved a plan Misaki had proposed to establish dedicated game development, marketing, and promotion divisions within Shirogane Animation. He approved the initial investment allocation of 12 billion yen without hesitation.
If anyone other than Misaki were overseeing this, Rei would have genuine concerns about the funds being mismanaged from the inside. With Misaki, he had none. He glanced symbolically at the strategic outline, reviewed the fund allocation breakdown, and left the rest entirely to her.
A person's energy was finite. Shirogane Animation's scale and operating revenue grew every year regardless.
May ended.
Nearly four months had passed since the conclusion of Attack on Titan. Demon Slayer and My Neighbor Totoro had been out of theatres for over a month, with their related manga volumes and merchandise sitting firmly at the top of sales charts across their respective categories.
And then there was the Bleach anime.
By episode ten, key characters including Kisuke Urahara's group and Uryu Ishida had appeared one by one.
"When is it finally going to get exciting? These past two weeks of Bleach have been so slow."
"Can't exactly call it slow. It's just... it's definitely not at the level of Attack on Titan or Hunter x Hunter. Though it's certainly more engaging than the first ten episodes of Demon Slayer were. Those were genuinely very plain. It only became something special from episode fifteen with the Natagumo Mountain Arc."
"If it weren't for Demon Slayer's comeback precedent, I might have genuinely started saying Shirogane-sensei's talent has run dry."
"Among Shirogane-sensei's works clearly intended to be long-running, Demon Slayer had the most plain start but the best results. One-Punch Man had the most exciting beginning but ultimately the lowest commercial performance of all his works."
"All of Shirogane-sensei's most praised long-running works have extended setup periods in the early stages. The protagonist has to gather companions first, then the story arcs unfold in a team format. That's why the later sections are so compelling. Let's just be patient."
"Why is everyone saying Bleach's plot is slow? I think it's quite good."
"It's just slow compared to the exciting middle and late sections of Attack on Titan and Hunter x Hunter. Compared to other new anime airing in the same period, it's clearly much more engaging."
"The latest episode's viewership is 7.45%. Basically since the anime started, the ratings haven't increased much."
"It'll probably be like Demon Slayer, only reaching its peak somewhere around the twentieth or thirtieth episode. I'm actually starting to look forward to Naruto now."
"Ninjas!"
"In one month, Naruto will also start airing on NHK. Wednesdays."
"The manga too. It starts serialisation in Dream Comic in the first week of July. I feel like with both works running concurrently, Dream Comic's weekly sales could very likely break thirty million copies on Wednesdays."
"Don't think that far ahead. If Naruto is also a slow starter like Bleach, saying that now is premature."
Although fans maintained their confidence in Bleach, after more than two months of airing they still could not identify the central storyline or the primary antagonist.
The recurring pattern of Ichigo's friends encountering Hollow attacks, being rescued, and introducing partners who could also see spirits had persisted for nearly three months, with no indication of when it would shift.
But since Rei had personally experienced this flaw in his previous life, he had no intention of repeating it in the Japanese adaptation.
From mid-June, after the twelfth episode aired, viewers began noticing something had shifted.
The plot was beginning to converge on the female lead, Kuchiki Rukia.
Veteran anime fans were acutely sensitive to this kind of movement. Even the smallest piece of foreshadowing in the early stages, a brief flashback, an expression that seemed incidental, was enough for them to start mapping the direction the plot was about to take.
And thinking about it now.
Rukia was a Shinigami, wasn't she?
It was only because she had lent her power to Kurosaki Ichigo that the past dozen or so episodes of him operating as a Substitute Shinigami, eliminating Hollows across the human world, had been possible at all.
But now. Where was the Soul Society?
Where were Rukia's superiors?
What was the relationship between Kurosaki Ichigo and the Soul Society?
And where did Hollows ultimately go when they were destroyed?
Once the plot began to converge on Kuchiki Rukia, these questions arose naturally in every viewer's mind.
"The recent plot has actually gotten a bit interesting."
Miyu did not necessarily watch each new episode of Bleach every week. She was too busy for that. But she bought Dream Comic every week without fail, always voted for her own work, and kept pace with the Bleach manga without exception.
"But this is taking so long. Twelve weeks since the premiere and it's already the end of June."
"That's just how long-running series work." Rei smiled, then thought for a moment and added: "At least, series like Bleach and Demon Slayer are like that."
"Are you saying some works aren't?"
"Naruto airing in half a month, and the One Piece anime premiering next year, are different. This might also be why, among the three, Bleach slightly lags behind in overall popularity. Although One Piece and Naruto also grow stronger toward their middle sections, the pacing of their early arcs is noticeably tighter than Bleach's."
"But that somewhat plain setup arc is over now." Rei said. "Starting next week, the new arc of Bleach will revolve around the Soul Society. You could say the anime is only now entering its true main storyline. Everything before was preparation."
"And this anime, before even entering its main storyline, is already number one in its timeslot in viewership and number one in manga popularity rankings?" Miyu looked at him, her expression one of complete exasperation, and let out a long sigh.
How was anyone supposed to compete with that.
Rei smiled and said nothing. If he were any other native professional in Japan's anime industry encountering a peer who had come with the advantages he carried, that exact same sense of quiet powerlessness would be rising in their chest right now.
"But Rei, when Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece are all serialising simultaneously, can you actually manage it?" Miyu looked at him.
She knew that currently, for both the Bleach and Naruto manga, Rei left the non-key pages to his assistants and focused his personal attention on the important scenes.
Even at his drawing speed, managing company operations while doing weekly updates across two manga would be difficult otherwise. But even with assistant support, conceiving the storyboards for three long-running weekly series was an extraordinary amount of work.
However skilled the assistants were, they were artists. The plot, the dialogue, the narrative structure, all of it required Rei to develop from the ground up.
Three long-running anime series. Weekly updates. And this would continue for years. Possibly a decade or more.
While Miyu felt her scalp prickle at the thought, she also looked at her husband with genuine concern.
"Don't worry." Rei laughed. "I won't exhaust myself thinking about plots and turn into a young man going prematurely bald."
"Who said anything about baldness? I just know from my own experience that even with a single manga, I often stay up late losing sleep over plot problems. And you're planning to take on something this enormous. I'm simply worried the workload will be too much and you'll collapse."
"Rest assured." Rei paused. "I know my limits. You can supervise me every day. I guarantee I'll get up and sleep on time and won't work through the night."
"And once the serialisation of all three long-running works stabilises, you'll actually find my daily workload might decrease."
The hard part with works of this scale was always the beginning. Once they were properly running, both the anime and manga could have the bulk of the work managed by assistants and subordinates, with Rei stepping in for the critical moments.
Time moved to late June.
During this period, Shirogane Animation's operations department began promoting the Naruto premiere across every available platform. Capital Tv, which had spent an enormous sum to secure a five-year broadcast contract for Naruto from Shirogane Animation, deployed its full resources in the final weeks of spring to promote the anime.
Capital TV and Ion TV had once competed at roughly equivalent levels in Japan's broadcasting landscape. But since Ion TV had partnered with Rei, its viewership, advertising revenue, and market standing had surpassed Capital TV in every measurable metric. Adopting a pragmatic approach, Capital TV had secured the broadcast rights for Naruto last year at a price notably above the standard market rate.
Now, in truth, the upper management was feeling considerable anxiety. They had secured the Naruto rights, but at that cost, could they actually recoup the investment?
There was no reversing the decision. Having committed, they were not about to be tentative about it. The promotional campaign Capital TV mounted for Naruto's premiere actually exceeded what Ion TV had done for Bleach.
The result was that in late June, Naruto, a series not yet even airing, generated anticipation that was not much weaker than what Bleach had created at its own premiere.
But all of that discussion was completely swept aside by the broadcast of episodes thirteen and fourteen of Bleach at the end of June.
In these two episodes, envoys from the Soul Society arrived in the human world.
Kuchiki Rukia's brother, Kuchiki Byakuya, and his subordinate Abarai Renji.
Their objectives were twofold.
The first: capture Kuchiki Rukia and return her to the Soul Society to face execution. The charge against her was that she had illegally bestowed Shinigami powers upon a human in the living world.
The second: kill Kurosaki Ichigo, the human who had stolen Soul Society Shinigami power.
In these two episodes, setting aside the strength Abarai Renji demonstrated, Kuchiki Byakuya's performance produced a very specific feeling in every viewer watching.
Despair.
Kurosaki Ichigo, whom everyone had been watching operate with overwhelming advantage against every Hollow he had faced, could not even perceive how Byakuya drew his sword before the defeat was over. Beyond that, Byakuya had destroyed the two most important spiritual pressure points in Ichigo's spiritual body, and stated flatly that he had less than an hour left to live. Even if he somehow survived that, he would lose his Shinigami powers entirely.
Struggling to stand, Ichigo stopped himself from an act that would have amounted to suicide, stopped by Kuchiki Rukia's gaze.
Because when someone looks at you through tears, telling you not to throw your life away, that even one hour of life is worth holding onto over certain death, and when she pleads with her own brother with every humility available to her simply to prevent him from killing you in the next moment, a viewer cannot help but stop alongside Ichigo.
After these two episodes, the people who had been saying the plot was putting them to sleep went completely quiet.
What replaced that was something else.
Bleach was a pure action battle anime. The plot was not designed to be heavy or sorrowful. It was a genuine classic-format shonen battle series at its core.
But passion and anger often occupy the same space.
Passion was what happened when an audience's anger found its outlet.
Bleach did not depress its audience to the point of making them want to abandon the series. Nor did it leave them simply grinding their teeth at Ichigo's weakness with no sense of direction. What it created was an extremely intense desire, clear and undeniable, to see the protagonist defeat these two enemies.
The main storyline of the work, which had not appeared at any point across the entire first portion of the broadcast, now emerged with complete clarity in the mind of every viewer watching.
Kurosaki Ichigo did not need to say it out loud. Even a viewer in elementary school watching the anime now understood exactly what the series was building toward.
Kurosaki Ichigo. Charge into the Soul Society. And rescue Rukia, who returned there willingly to face death, in order to save you.
...
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