In the summer cour, there were five anime productions with investments exceeding 30 million yen.
Among them, Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World was by no means the most anticipated title.
Although Sora Kamakawa had risen to fame the year before, Japan had no shortage of renowned anime directors. And this season, there was also a massively popular name like Touga Kuze in the lineup. At best, people could say that Re:Zero had decent buzz before its premiere, but it still wasn't the kind of title dominating the entire summer anime market.
Isekai adventure anime had already existed in the Japanese animation industry for thirty years. No matter how the details changed, it always came back to the same formulas: demon kings, heroes, farming, kingdom-building, recycled fantasy tropes dressed in slightly different clothes.
There was barely any room left for true innovation in the genre. At that point, whether a show succeeded or failed depended almost entirely on whether the characters were interesting enough to carry it.
That was why, on that night, most anime fans sitting in front of Southern Alliance TV to watch Re:Zero were thinking the same thing.
And yet, after nearly an hour of animation, the mood had changed completely.
Some viewers, slower to process what they had just seen, were still dazed, replaying the plot in their minds and trying to sort through the sequence of events.
But the sharper anime fans, the ones who caught onto structure and intent quickly, had already begun to feel the unique appeal of Re:Zero.
A time loop.
Save. Load. Reset.
A mechanic so ordinary in video games, so natural that no one even thought twice about it there, had somehow been transformed into the core of an anime narrative.
That sense of novelty hit the audience hard. And because the setting itself felt so fresh, it covered up, to a certain extent, the slower pacing of the story's opening.
That night, the NatsuYume forums exploded.
Thousands upon thousands of anime fans crowded together, tearing the episode apart scene by scene as they discussed the plot.
"So how exactly did Subaru get transported there? I still don't get it. Did I miss some key frame or something?"
"No clue. Feels like foreshadowing. But honestly, that's not even the important part. The death-reset mechanic is insanely interesting."
"This is the first time in five years I've watched an isekai fantasy anime for a full hour without yawning once."
"Wait, you people seriously think this is good? The protagonist dies three times in one hour, gets beaten up by some low-level thug, and when he's killed his eyes are full of tears from the pain. What exactly is there to praise about a protagonist like that? I could do that too."
"You? No, you absolutely couldn't. I guarantee that if someone stabbed you in the abdomen and your guts were nearly spilling out, you'd stay as far away as possible from that gut-hunting killer on your second loop. The protagonist chose to suffer that brutal death twice just to repay the silver-haired girl who helped him. That kind of mental fortitude is way beyond all you loudmouths posting online."
"Exactly. When I was younger, I thought I was fearless too. Then I got into a fight and was stabbed once. I almost died. After that, every time I saw punks or reckless kids, I avoided trouble completely. Once you've truly stood on the edge of death, that fear never leaves you. And this guy was murdered three times in less than a day. You want to compare your willpower to his?"
"But if he knows he'll come back to life after being killed, would he really still fear death? At worst, it just hurts for a bit. What's the big deal?"
"Then answer this - now that you're grown, can you calmly handle a nurse walking toward you with a huge syringe at the hospital? Because I can't. I still get nervous the moment I see the needle. If even that is scary, how do you think it feels to be stabbed and bleed out to death?"
"I get why younger anime fans are obsessed with the brainless stuff from the last few years. I had that phase too. But sometimes you need to sit down and watch anime that actually put real effort into the writing. Don't you ever get tired of all those shows that only sell cute girls, shallow character gimmicks, and fanservice?"
"I've been an anime fan for twenty years. At this point I'm practically numb to most of it. Usually I drop shows after one or two episodes. But after finishing the first episode of Re:Zero, I can only say this: if the rest of the story keeps this same level of quality and intrigue, I'm following it every single week."
"I'm in. Back when Director Sora Kamakawa's works only aired on Tokushima TV, I never got to watch them right away. But now things are different. Fourteen prefectures can watch his latest work through Southern Alliance TV, and nearly eighty percent of the country has access to it. That feels amazing."
"Don't remind me. People in the western region still can't watch Southern Alliance TV at all. It's miserable. They need to get moving already and strike deals with local stations. If they could become the fifth network in the country with true nationwide reach, that would be huge."
"If Re:Zero performs well, Southern Alliance will have stronger numbers for its listing and financing plans. Better business, a higher stock price, more cash on hand - once that happens, expansion will come naturally. Growing a network costs money."
"I'm saying it now. From this point on, I'm a lifelong fan of Director Sora Kamakawa. Three works in a row, and every one of them fits my taste perfectly. The guy's an animation genius. I've got a feeling the number one anime of the summer might actually be Re:Zero."
"Let's wait until Sunday before going that far. Sunday night, The King Dragon of Next Door, directed by Touga Kuze, finally premieres. We still have no idea what kind of monster that show is going to be. Don't hype Director Sora Kamakawa too much yet. That kind of overpraise only attracts backlash."
Of the five most anticipated anime of the season, Re:Zero aired on Friday. On Saturday night at eight and nine, Night of the Detective and Summer Sound were broadcast.
As for The King Dragon of Next Door and The Man in the Mirror, they were scheduled for Sunday night at eight and nine respectively.
The major television stations were smart. They competed, of course, but there was also a tacit understanding among them. For the sake of ratings, they avoided launching works of the same genre in the exact same timeslot. If they all collided head-on, none of their numbers would look good.
The next morning, Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World received its first score on NatsuYume.
Overnight, more than one million viewers gave the anime an opening rating of 9.0.
What made that score especially meaningful was that it wasn't fixed. Fans could still revise their ratings later if they felt the story collapsed toward the end - or rose to an even greater level. If a series fumbled its conclusion or achieved something extraordinary, the score would reflect that over time.
By noon, the first episode's ratings figures had been released.
Across the fourteen prefectures where Southern Alliance TV carried the broadcast, the anime posted an average household rating of 4.27%.
At first glance, that number didn't seem overwhelmingly shocking.
For comparison, Akane no Sora, which had fiercely competed with Natsume Yuujinchou the year before, had opened with a nationwide average above 4.4%.
But once you remembered one thing, the value of that 4.27% became immediately clear: the lead anime promoted by Southern Alliance TV in the previous cour had only opened at 3.78% across those same fourteen prefectures.
That was enough to show how much weight this result carried.
As soon as the station's production department finished compiling the data, the people in charge of the animation block spent the entire morning with smiles on their faces.
"That Sora Kamakawa really knows what he's doing."
"I honestly thought Japanese anime fans wouldn't respond well to a story that tortures the protagonist this much. I never expected the reception to be this strong."
"A 4.27% debut. This should be treated as an S-class anime, right? If that's the case, the station's going to start rerunning it in less important time slots too. That'll help it build even more viewers outside the main broadcast window. The ratings are definitely going to rise."
"Do you think there's any chance our station's anime could outperform one - or maybe even two - of the flagship anime airing on the four major Tokyo networks this season?"
"I heard that when the department chief negotiated with Yume Animation and Sora Kamakawa, the goal was clear. They wanted him to help the station produce an anime that could finish in the top three of the season in ratings."
"Who can say for sure? Sometimes our variety shows and dramas still squeeze into the national top four for the quarter. The problem has always been animation. That department's been stuck around seventh or eighth place for years. If Re:Zero really reaches that kind of ratings rank, the company's performance report before going public will look far better."
In the office, Ryo Yukishiro was on the phone with Sora Kamakawa.
After relaying Re:Zero's first-episode ratings to him and expressing the station's satisfaction with the anime's launch, Ryo Yukishiro finally put the phone down.
Southern Alliance TV still didn't have the strength for full national broadcasting, but its signal covered Japan's strongest economic regions. Reaching nearly eighty percent of the population was already enough to prove a great deal.
In terms of overall power, Southern Alliance stood only one tier below the four major Tokyo networks.
Because of that, in mainstream media statistics, Re:Zero's ratings would be ranked directly against the four giants. No one was going to obsess over whether the missing twenty percent of the population introduced some tiny deviation in the numbers.
The difference was too small to matter.
For now, Re:Zero had opened at 4.27%.
All that remained was to wait and see how the other four contenders performed over the next two days.
On Saturday night, Night of the Detective and Summer Sound aired one after the other.
By Sunday daytime, their ratings had been compiled.
Their nationwide average household ratings were 4.16% and 4.23%, respectively.
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