On the night of November 11, the entire staff of Yume Animation gathered to celebrate. Episode six of Natsume Yuujinchou had climbed to the top of the ratings across the four prefectures of Shikoku, and to everyone present, that result meant far more than a simple number.
It was not only the company's employees who attended. People from every side involved in the production were there as well: the singers behind several of the series' songs, the main voice actors, and even a few high-ranking executives from Tokushima TV. The atmosphere carried a restrained kind of exhilaration, as though everyone was still trying to maintain some composure while having already surrendered, deep down, to the thrill of victory.
"Cheers!"
"Cheers!"
"Cheers!"
"Kantoku, let me raise this one to you."
Glasses rose one after another, voices overlapped, and laughter filled the room.
Sora Kamakawa, who usually drank in moderation, simply could not hold out that night. Haruto, along with several voice actors who had become wildly popular thanks to Natsume Yuujinchou, surrounded him with far too much enthusiasm for him to escape. Between round after round of toasts, excited praise, and relentless insistence, he was swept along before he even realized it. By the time he noticed, he was already completely drunk.
The next morning, he woke with his head throbbing and his body heavy, as if every muscle still remembered the excess of the night before. Still half-asleep, he grabbed his phone to check the time - and the shock was enough to blast away most of the hangover on the spot. He took only five minutes to wash up, get dressed, and leave the house. Then he got in the car and drove straight to the company.
Celebration was one thing. The production of Natsume Yuujinchou, however, had entered a critical phase.
That morning alone, he had three meetings he needed to chair in person.
As Kantoku, the meetings Sora called were nothing like the hollow gatherings so many companies held merely to look busy. Every one of them had a real purpose, a practical function, and direct consequences for the work itself. Animation meetings, dubbing meetings, photography meetings, coloring meetings - in the end, everything related to the anime's production passed through him. It was his responsibility to make every requirement clear, explain exactly what kind of direction he wanted for the series, and ensure that every department was working in the same rhythm.
Of course, he could have made things easier for himself. He could have delegated much of that work to Sumire, or expanded the episode direction team and let other staff take over part of the coordination.
But if he did that, the Natsume Yuujinchou that emerged from the studio would gradually stop bearing his full signature. Little by little, the series would begin to reflect other people's style.
And at the stage he was in now, Sora knew he could not afford that risk.
The meetings ran into one another without any real pause, stretching from morning all the way into the afternoon. By the time he finally had a moment to breathe, he practically collapsed into his chair. His mind felt heavy, his body drained, and even his eyes stung with fatigue.
"...Ah."
Leaning back, staring up at the ceiling, he let out a long sigh.
It had already been almost a year since he had come to this world.
Thinking about it carefully, across both his previous life and this one, this had probably been the fullest and busiest year he had ever lived. Before, he had worked at a job he did not even like, drifting through each day in a colorless routine, barely noticing the passage of time. Now, he was involved in the very industry that had always fascinated him: anime. And in less than a year, he had gone from being no one to becoming a rising young Kantoku, someone whose name was already beginning to circulate among the industry's promising newcomers.
But at the same time, the higher he climbed, the more clearly he could feel the weight pressing down on his shoulders.
As company president, it was no longer enough to think only about finishing a work. After resolving the inherited debt crisis, the next unavoidable issue was the studio's profitability - and with it, the well-being of everyone working there.
Over those months, the people around him had stopped being mere relationships left behind by the body's original owner. At some point, without his realizing exactly when, those connections had become real bonds. He had built something genuine with them. They had shared pressure, sleepless nights, uncertainty, small breakthroughs, and quiet failures.
When Yume Animation had stood on the brink of collapse, they had chosen to stay.
That alone was enough to make him want to repay them.
As president, Sora wanted Natsume Yuujinchou to earn as much as possible. He wanted the series to bring in more profit, for the studio to breathe easier, for the employees to receive larger bonuses, for all of them to finally feel that the months of effort had paid off in a tangible way.
And in the end, much of that would depend on the BD release, scheduled for three days from now.
BD sales had never been the only way for an anime to recover its investment. Even so, both in the Japan of his previous life and in this current world, the industry still placed enormous importance on those figures.
The reason was simple: BD sales turned commercial value into something visible.
They were a direct, raw indicator, difficult to dress up or misread. When an anime sold well on physical media, it almost always meant there was an audience willing to spend real money on that work. And once that happened, derivative products - toys, figures, licensing, collaborations, soundtrack releases, collector's items - usually performed well too.
In his previous life, Neon Genesis Evangelion had achieved an average of more than two hundred thousand BD copies per volume in the Japanese market, remaining a nearly legendary benchmark for sales. And since its birth, the global revenue generated by its derivative merchandise had reached staggering figures.
Of course, Evangelion was far too exceptional to be used as a simple measuring stick. Within a commercial ecosystem of that size, BD revenue accounted for only a small fraction of the whole. And on top of that, the two worlds were too different to allow for straightforward comparisons or reliable proportional calculations.
Even so, the industry's habit remained unchanged: use BD performance as a basis for estimating a work's commercial value and deciding how far it was worth pushing merchandise, licensing, and brand expansion.
Six months earlier, the BD for Voices of a Distant Star, Sora's previous work, had ended its run with an average of just over eighty-seven thousand copies per volume, ranking fifth among all anime in the winter season.
But this time...
How much would Natsume Yuujinchou sell?
He did not have a confident answer.
At best, he could rely on the influence and overwhelmingly positive reception the series had enjoyed in his previous life to conclude that, in this Japan's market, reputation and public attention would certainly not be the problem. After all, while the worlds were different, both belonged to a similar cultural sphere, shaped by close emotional sensibilities, comparable family values, and a narrative taste that was not so far apart. For a work like this, the audience's preferences were unlikely to differ in any drastic way.
But reputation and commercial value were not the same thing.
Prestige was one thing. Converting that into money was another.
"In the end, it all depends on how much promotional backing Tv Animation is willing to throw behind Natsume Yuujinchou..."
Murmuring that to himself, Sora rubbed his forehead, trying to ease the lingering ache.
In the television broadcast market, Natsume Yuujinchou could already be considered a respectable success. Not only had it reached the top of the ratings across the four prefectures of Shikoku, it had also been steadily gaining traction nationwide for more than a month, driven by a constant wave of praise among anime fans. People were talking about it, recommending it, discussing it. The series had presence.
But ratings, buzz, and prestige did not, by themselves, guarantee sufficient financial return.
To turn attention into actual profit, the investor's weight mattered just as much.
At the celebration the night before, Yumi Noriko had not shown up.
And the reason was simple: she had boarded a direct flight to Tokyo. As the sole heir to Noriko shi Animation, she intended to use her position at the company's headquarters to secure better conditions for the distribution of Natsume Yuujinchou merchandise and win more promotional support for the series.
Whenever he thought of her, Sora always reached the same conclusion.
As an investor, Yumi was extraordinarily valuable.
She had not limited herself to putting money into the project. For months, she had been promoting the series nonstop through her account, followed by millions of fans. She had also used her influence within the family company to accelerate the release, production, and design of the series' licensed merchandise, while directing promotional resources in Natsume Yuujinchou's favor.
If every investor in the world acted like her, perhaps there would be almost no such thing as a difficult business.
Thinking that way, Sora even felt, to some extent, a strange kind of relief that Yumi had never truly worked in a corporate environment after graduating from university. Because she had not been overly shaped by cynicism, excessive calculation, or market opportunism, she still retained that direct, almost idealistic way of helping someone she believed in. All it had taken was investing in him, and she had thrown herself into supporting Natsume Yuujinchou with everything she had.
If it had been a seasoned investor, one of those people accustomed to turning every favor into leverage, they would definitely have used all that "extra effort" as a bargaining chip. At the very least, they would have tried to squeeze out a larger share of the work's future profits.
But Yumi was not like that.
She took contracts seriously. She honored what had been agreed upon without twisting the terms for her own benefit.
That alone was already rare enough.
Starting on November 13, the atmosphere in the country's anime industry changed completely.
A wave of unrest began spreading through the entire autumn market.
Among the season's titles, The Dragon King Next Door made the first move. Its first BD volume, containing episodes one and two, hit the shelves before its competitors and immediately drew the attention of the entire industry.
The series' critical reception that season had not been especially strong. Even so, that did not change the fact that it occupied a prime-time slot on Seiun TV and was followed by tens of millions of viewers across Japan. It was a major title, airing in a powerful time slot, backed by a large and established fanbase.
On release day itself, otaku districts in cities like Tokyo, Osaka, and several major coastal urban centers were packed. Long lines formed outside disc shops from early morning, a sight that alone was enough to demonstrate the title's commercial power.
On top of that, at an anime convention held in Tokyo in recent days, key members of The Dragon King Next Door production team, including Maki and Natsuyuki Shirasawa, had also taken part in a public autograph session and fan meet-and-greet.
Maki, who had taken a serious blow after seeing his series lose to Sora's in the ratings across the four prefectures of Shikoku, had spent several days visibly shaken. But as soon as, in the following week, even Akane no Sora ended up losing to Natsume Yuujinchou in the same region, he recovered on the spot, like a man who had suddenly regained the ability to breathe.
Because if his work alone had been the only one among the four major broadcasters to lose, then the problem would certainly have been his.
But if the flagship anime pushed by all four networks had been defeated...
Then, in his eyes, the problem stopped being personal.
The problem became Sora Kamakawa.
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