By late June, the sun burned like a living flame.
"Director, tomorrow morning is the preview screening for episode three. What time should we set it for?"
"Nine."
"Director, have you finished the storyboard for episode fourteen of Re:Zero? If it doesn't get submitted today, the entire production schedule is going to slip."
"I know. I'm working on it."
"Director, about the color meeting this afternoon - "
"Director..."
There were more than forty people in the Tokushima branch alone. Add the hundred or so staff members at the Tokyo head office, and the entire production had become a machine of over a hundred and forty people spread across more than a dozen departments, all of them forced to move in perfect coordination just to keep a two-cour anime from falling apart. A project of that scale was far more complicated than a single-cour production, and the pressure of managing every moving part only intensified as the premiere drew closer.
Even so, Sora Kamakawa had grown much more familiar with the workflow by now. On top of that, Sumire had taken a share of the burden off his shoulders in several critical areas. Because of that, even with only one week left before Re:Zero aired, the entire project was still holding together. Every department was advancing as it should - under strain, yes, but not in chaos.
Sora Kamakawa pulled his eyes away from the PV for Breath of the Dragon's Flame.
He had already expected the show to be good. Even so, after actually watching the trailer, he could not help feeling a quiet sense of awe. The visuals were stunning, the backgrounds had weight, and the character designs were instantly eye-catching. If something like that had appeared in the anime industry of his previous life, fans would have spent months praising it before the first episode had even aired.
Now, with the summer season on the verge of opening, every title was poised like an arrow pulled taut on the bowstring.
The promotional campaigns for Night of the Detective, Natsuon, and The Man in the Mirror were no less aggressive. The PVs released for those productions were equally explosive in quality. With Breath of the Dragon's Flame added to the mix, it was obvious that this summer's anime market was far hotter than last year's.
Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu was scheduled to premiere on Friday, July 4th, at eight in the evening.
Among the five anime of the season with investments exceeding thirty million yen, Re:Zero would be the first to air.
That was why, the moment the calendar turned to July, everyone at Yume Animation was pulled into an atmosphere of tension they could no longer hide.
Yumi Noriko began promoting Re:Zero on her X account with one post a day. She even made several videos themed around the series, and every one of them racked up millions of views on NatsuYume.
As for Sumire, she had started losing entire nights of sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, the same fears came back. What if, once the anime aired, viewers started hating the protagonist because of the bizarre, brutal, almost absurd ways he kept dying? What if the show's reputation collapsed? What if all the credibility and money Sora Kamakawa had built up over the previous year were wiped out in one blow?
At Southern Alliance TV, the head of the production department, Ryo Yukishiro, received the discs sent over by Yume Animation that very day. Before long, the employees responsible for the anime programming block had gathered in a screening room to watch the first episode of the new work by the prodigy director who, in just a single year, had become impossible to ignore within the industry.
In truth, Re:Zero had a relatively slow opening.
That was unavoidable. The story needed time to lay down its hidden threads, to prepare the protagonist, and to bury clues in ordinary-looking details - clues that would only become meaningful in the second loop, the third, or even later.
If the show had aired in a normal weekly format of twenty-something minutes per episode, it would have taken viewers two or three weeks to properly understand its world, its rules, and the shape of its story.
That was too slow.
Afraid that the television audience would not have the patience to wait that long, the station had approved Sora Kamakawa's proposal: the first episode would air as a fifty-minute special.
Ryo Yukishiro sat at the front of the room with the rest of the staff as the projector began to play.
Fifty minutes later, the episode ended.
Around the room, some faces had gone solemn. Others were lit by a kind of excitement they could barely contain.
"Well? What do you all think?"
Ryo Yukishiro was still caught in the aftertaste of what he had just seen. To be honest, even though he was already past fifty, he had taken to the story almost immediately.
But what he liked meant very little on its own. The real question was whether the audience would like it too.
"From a broadcast standards perspective, there's no issue. Nothing requires extra cuts for gore, sexual content, or anything like that."
"I thought the story was really interesting. And the way the ending song came in - that was perfect."
"I disagree. The market is leaning toward lighter shows right now. Re:Zero already felt heavy in script form, but animated, it's even more uncomfortable. In fifty minutes, Subaru Natsuki does little besides get beaten, die, and start over. It's hard to even see him as a protagonist."
"I liked it. I think it's going to blow up."
At this stage, no matter what the final product was like, Southern Alliance TV was committed to airing it. There was no turning back.
And yet the thing that reassured Ryo Yukishiro most was precisely how sharply the episode had divided opinion within the station.
The people who liked it really liked it. They saw personality in it, boldness, a genuine attempt to do something new with the otherworld adventure genre.
The people who disliked it rejected it without hesitation. To them, Subaru Natsuki was a protagonist with no presence, no grandeur, nothing that resembled the lead of an anime.
Some of them even thought, without the slightest embarrassment, that if any ordinary person were dropped into another world with the power to return after death, they would probably perform better than he did.
But no one called the show mediocre.
No one said it was "fine," "decent," or "passable."
And Ryo Yukishiro knew exactly what that meant. When an unreleased work earned that kind of lukewarm internal response, there was usually a better than ninety percent chance it would premiere to a flood of negative reviews.
Re:Zero was not in that category.
If anything, the signs pointed in the opposite direction.
As things stood, once it aired, the series would probably split opinion cleanly down the middle.
Either it would become a phenomenon.
Or it would collapse completely.
The thought made Ryo Yukishiro's expression darken.
Sometimes, it was the safer works - the formulaic ones, the predictable ones, the stories with nothing new to say - that secured the most reliable baseline.
But Sora Kamakawa had never been that kind of creator.
Since his debut, all three of his works had made the same thing unmistakably clear: he liked to take risks. He liked innovation. He liked pushing the structure of the script and the storyboard somewhere unexpected.
His first two productions had earned near-unanimous praise for that boldness.
This third one, however...
In the end, all he could do was trust him.
That was how geniuses were. Before a work aired, it always provoked disagreement. Only after the numbers came in did those disagreements cease to matter.
Over the next few days, Southern Alliance TV and Yume Animation intensified their joint promotion for Re:Zero. On July 3rd, Sora Kamakawa even appeared as a guest on one of the station's variety programs to give the anime one final push.
Then July 4th arrived.
Friday.
That night, a huge portion of Japan's anime fandom seemed to wake up at once.
In most seasons, fans only truly paid attention to the main titles promoted by Tokyo's four major broadcasters. That was despite the fact that they endlessly complained that those stations' animation departments were getting worse every year and backing weaker projects each season.
The problem was simple: when you looked beyond them, the rest of the market was often even worse.
Until now, Southern Alliance TV's anime had rarely drawn any real attention. Over the last seven or eight years, the station had produced nothing but middling works. Not a single breakout success.
If the station's lead title this season, Re:Zero, was drawing attention at all, there was only one reason.
Its director was Sora Kamakawa.
To anime fans, Natsume Yuujinchou still carried weight. It still had prestige. It still lingered in memory.
And that name alone was enough to make plenty of people at least show up for the first episode of his new work.
"One hour left. I heard the first episode of Re:Zero is going to be fifty minutes."
"Do your best, Director Sora Kamakawa."
"I'm not really into isekai, but I'll watch the first episode to show support. If it's not good, I'm dropping it next week. I'll only come back when Director Sora Kamakawa finally makes season two of Natsume Yuujinchou."
"Hah! Tonight the disaster begins. You Sora Kamakawa fans keep saying Re:Zero is going to crush Director Touga Kuze's new anime. So let's all watch together."
"You can tell just from the name that this thing is doomed."
"Keep laughing, Touga Kuze fans, Natsuyuki Shirasawa fans. After tonight, let's see if you're still smiling."
Jin Kudou closed the page on his phone with a tired look.
Ever since Sora Kamakawa had become famous, the number of haters around him had exploded.
And arguing with them was pointless.
No amount of reasoning worked. The only way to shut people like that up was with results.
He lifted his gaze toward the television.
It was already 7:59 p.m.
On screen was a trailer for one of Southern Alliance TV's own dramas, a legal series about a housewife returning to the workforce.
And when that trailer ended, Re:Zero began.
No opening sequence.
Instead, it opened with indistinct whispers steeped in something dark and sickening, followed by the image of a girl collapsed in a pool of blood.
Then came an ordinary boy walking out of a convenience store with a shopping bag in hand. He felt a little sleepy, rubbed his eyes on reflex - and in the next instant, a fantasy world spread out before him.
"Huh? An isekai this casual?"
Even Jin Kudou was caught off guard.
After watching so many otherworld anime, this might have been the most offhand transition he had ever seen.
The protagonist, Subaru Natsuki, was the kind of chuunibyou teenager thoroughly steeped in otaku culture, so he did not panic when he realized he had been transported elsewhere. If anything, he got excited. He immediately started imagining that he might be chosen, someone special, and before long he was fantasizing about everything he might experience in this new world.
And it only took Jin Kudou a short while of watching the way Subaru spoke and carried himself to feel a strange sense of familiarity rising inside him.
That kind of boy existed everywhere.
A high school kid full of fantasies, slightly detached from reality, the sort who could easily live next door.
Or, on some days, be himself.
At first, Re:Zero did not seem to have any major explosive hook.
Beyond the sour apple vendor and the mugging in the alley where three thugs cornered Subaru Natsuki, there was nothing especially shocking. In the middle of that, a young female thief flashed by for only a moment, fleeing from someone, then vanished again.
After that came the strangest part.
Subaru Natsuki, convinced that because he had been summoned to another world he must possess some hidden special ability that had yet to awaken, simply could not accept the idea of being robbed without resistance. That was not how isekai protagonists were supposed to work.
So he fought back.
Reality answered without mercy.
He was beaten down by all three thugs and could not offer the slightest resistance.
"..."
By that point, Jin Kudou had gone speechless.
At the very least, in that respect, Re:Zero's protagonist really did feel new.
Soon after, the silver-haired girl appeared.
She had entered the alley in pursuit of an important item stolen from her by the thief, and in the process, she also rescued Subaru Natsuki from the beating he was taking.
That was how the two of them met.
Grateful that she had driven the thugs away, Subaru Natsuki decided to help her search for the young thief who had taken her insignia.
Before he realized it, ten minutes had already passed since the episode began.
The plot still had not delivered any huge twist, any overpowering hook.
Even so, the way the silver-haired girl was written was charming enough to make Jin Kudou like her almost immediately.
"Is this more of a slice-of-life kind of anime?"
A trace of disappointment slipped into him.
Within the isekai genre, there were all kinds of directions a story could take: harem, romance, political intrigue, war.
But to him, the dullest were always the same - peaceful everyday-life stories and outright gag comedies.
"Satella."
"My name is Satella."
Only after more than ten minutes had passed did Subaru Natsuki - and Jin Kudou on the other side of the screen - finally learn the silver-haired girl's name.
In the meantime, however, the relationship between the two had already advanced quite a bit. Their search for the thief gradually turned into a string of good deeds across the city: helping a lost little girl, assisting people in trouble, solving small everyday problems one after another.
Then night fell.
After asking around, the two of them finally discovered where Felt was hiding and made their way there.
And it was precisely when Jin Kudou was beginning to feel drowsy, almost ready to lose interest in the story's pace, that the narrative finally bared its fangs.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Additionally, more chapters exclusive content are available on Patreon: https://patreon.com/ImmortalEmperor?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
- CHRONICLES OF THE ICE SOVEREIGN
-PLAYING ANIME LEGENDS
-THE OTHER WORLD'S ANIMATOR
Join now and help shape the future of the story while enjoying special rewards!