On the third Friday of January, the third episode of Steins;Gate aired.
As always, the series blended chuunibyou absurdity with hard science in a way that looked ridiculous at first glance, only to slowly arrange itself into a strangely convincing logic. With the help of Makise, the genius girl of science, the protagonist, Kouren, finally began to understand why the microwave in his apartment could turn bananas into a gelatinous mess.
While the microwave was running, all one had to do was place a cellphone beside it and have someone else call that phone.
In other words, as absurd as it sounded, the microwave became a kind of time machine.
The bananas placed inside that improvised time machine were distorted by the force of time itself, transforming into those strange gel bananas.
There was also the matter of the text message Kouren had sent in the first episode, the one telling his best friend Jouta that Makise had been stabbed. The problem was that the message's received time showed one week earlier.
The explanation followed the same logic. At that moment, Jouta had just happened to be using his phone beside the microwave. The interaction between the cellphone and the microwave distorted time, sending that message one week into the past.
The new part-time girl working for the downstairs landlord, the man nicknamed Mr. CRT, also appeared at exactly the right moment. Suzuha brought news about the "old computer" that Ruka, the gloomy older woman whose mental state seemed increasingly unstable, had been desperately trying to find.
The episode also mentioned that, twenty-six years in the future, the world would fall under the dictatorship of an organization called SERN, which had seized control of time-machine technology. Under its rule, countless ordinary people would be slaughtered.
And John, an internet celebrity who claimed to be a time traveler, had supposedly returned to the past precisely to find a way to use the time machine, oppose SERN, and save the world.
After Kouren managed to contact John online, the other party spoke bluntly. Although he insisted that he had never gone ten years into the past, Kouren remembered with absolute certainty that John had been active on the internet back then.
Perhaps both of them were right.
Because the John whom Kouren remembered, the one active online ten years ago, might very well have been a John from another worldline.
Kouren, carrying memories from a different worldline, had jumped into this one.
It was only by the third week of broadcast that anime fans in Japan finally began to understand, however reluctantly, what this series was actually about.
In the first episode, Makise had been stabbed. The protagonist sent a message. Then the worldline shifted, and Makise survived.
But in the world where Makise lived, twenty-six years later, an organization called SERN would obtain the time machine and nearly destroy the entire world.
The plot was difficult to follow, but if the audience stopped to think for a moment, the logic was still manageable.
The problem was…
Some fans actually tried to test the Phone Microwave's time-travel function at home using their own cellphones and microwaves.
Naturally, the result was obvious.
"I really was an idiot for seriously believing something like this could trigger time travel."
"Hahaha, so I wasn't the only one who believed it. The Phone Microwave is a time machine, hahaha."
"When it comes to spouting nonsense with a straight face, that old bastard Sora is still unbeatable."
"This anime is starting to get interesting. The story still hasn't exploded yet, but you can feel that Kantoku Sora is seriously planting foreshadowing and setting things up."
"Exactly. Only people like us, who are starving for good anime, can appreciate the fun of this early buildup. Younger anime fans will definitely find it boring. It's already been three episodes, and the main story still hasn't properly appeared."
"All right, forget whether the Phone Microwave is really a time machine or not. According to the anime's internal logic, that thing can mess with time. So now the real question is this: why would one message from the protagonist saying Makise was stabbed be enough to alter an entire worldline? I've heard of parallel world theory, but I can't understand how a single text sent one week into the past could have such a massive effect on the world. SERN creating a time machine, Makise not even needing to die anymore… I feel awful. I spent an hour thinking about this and still couldn't figure it out."
"Ruka looking for an old computer, Makise, the Phone Microwave, the time machine, John from the future… I feel like all of these things are connected by some invisible thread, but I just can't see how. My head hurts."
"This anime is really slow-burn and hardcore. I don't think it's suited to weekly viewing. It feels more like the kind of series you wait to finish and then binge all at once. If Liar Game, also by Kantoku Sora, weren't so ridiculously good this season, I might actually suspect he had run out of talent."
"That's true. A lot of Kantoku Sora's haters wanted to say he had already peaked and that Steins;Gate would definitely flop. But AD is doing well, the reviews are good, and the biggest surprise is that Liar Game has only aired two episodes and already got me completely fired up."
"Are dramas really that good now? I haven't watched one in ages."
"If you ignore the acting and focus only on the story, I think it's incredibly interesting."
"I have a feeling that even though Steins;Gate is still above a 5% rating right now, in a few weeks it might not even be able to beat Liar Game."
"No way."
"In the end, ratings depend on the quality of the work. Kantoku Sora said Steins;Gate is a slow burn, but who knows what the final result will be? Meanwhile, Liar Game really is getting popular. Even the women at my workplace are watching it. I have a feeling this drama might become the biggest hit of the winter season."
During its third week, Steins;Gate was still deep in its slow-burn setup phase.
Many impatient anime fans had already decided to let the episodes pile up before continuing.
After all, Southern Alliance TV's broadcast plan included multiple reruns of Steins;Gate over the next few months. If the anime's reputation improved later, they could always catch up then.
That mindset among viewers directly affected the third episode's ratings. Steins;Gate dropped to 4.97%.
The next day, the ratings for the third episode of AD were also released.
Within the first season of AD, the Fuko arc, the most emotional part of the story, was still highly praised among fans. Its ratings remained steady and even rose slightly, holding at 5.21%.
However, The Time Mage, the highest-rated work of the season and also airing on Saturday nights, climbed again, reaching 5.32%.
On Sunday, after holding back for three full weeks, Japan's anime media finally could not restrain themselves any longer.
Previously, they had still worried that both of Sora's new works this season might be the kind of stories that began quietly before soaring in quality after the third episode.
But looking at the situation now, AD was merely a well-produced romance anime with a slight touch of fantasy. It was interesting, of course, but that was all.
It could not even compare to a single strand of Re:Zero.
As for Steins;Gate, it seemed to be nothing more than an ordinary soft science-fiction anime.
Although its ratings were still holding around 5%, if this had been two years earlier, a result like that would absolutely have made it a contender for the most popular anime of the season. But this winter season was crowded with strong titles. Barring any surprises, the third episode of Steins;Gate would fall to sixth place in the weekly rankings.
At a time like this, the media naturally showed no mercy.
"The genius Kantoku Sora fails to defeat veteran Kantoku Naofumi. His anime ratings continue to be suppressed, and he may already be out of the race for first place in the winter season."
"Red Scales and The Time Mage have firmly pinned down Sora's two major works, tearing away the last fig leaf covering this so-called genius. Could it be that his outstanding results over the past two years were only possible because the industry's competition had been too weak, making him appear far more impressive than he truly was?"
"Everyone thought this season's anime scene would become a war between multiple powerhouses, but now it seems far more likely to turn into a final duel between Naofumi and Hinata, two old rivals from twenty years ago. Sora's Steins;Gate has already been eliminated ahead of time, and judging by the current situation, AD lacks the staying power to maintain its ratings."
"This is the price of arrogance. Naofumi and Hinata's attitude toward animation far surpasses that of the so-called young genius. At the very least, they would not be writing drama scripts while producing two anime in the same season. Knowing full well that he was facing several industry veterans, yet still refusing to devote himself completely, Sora has no one to blame for his defeat."
"Kantoku Naofumi remains sharp even at fifty-seven. As for twenty-one-year-old Sora, perhaps he still needs several more years of tempering before he can reach that height."
For the entire Sunday, comments like these spread wildly across the internet.
The winter season had only reached its third week, and yet those media outlets had already started pushing this narrative. It was difficult to say that the four major networks had not quietly paid people to stir the waters.
But Southern Alliance TV did not have any good countermeasures either. When the results could not surpass the competition, spending more money on hired comments would not mean much.
Besides, it was difficult to blame Sora.
No matter how low Steins;Gate's ranking had fallen, it still had a 4.97% rating.
Without Sora, given the animation production teams Southern Alliance TV could normally hire, it would already be difficult to produce a work that broke past 4%.
And although AD was only third in the rankings, it still held a massive 5.21%.
Sora's performance this season simply was not as overwhelming as it had been during the broadcast of Re:Zero. That was normal.
When Naofumi and Hinata were young, their own works had fallen into the 3% range more than once.
Compared to that, Sora was already remarkably stable.
The real issue was that, last year, Southern Alliance TV's animation block had stood alone at the top of Japan.
This year, however, two other works were suppressing its titles. In the end, the people in the production department simply could not avoid feeling unsettled.
At seven-thirty that evening, after spending the day battling haters online, Sora's fans also turned on Southern Alliance TV.
At first, as anime fans, they had looked down on Liar Game.
But after watching out of curiosity for two weeks…
They had fallen completely.
Moe Koyanagi drank her milk tea while waiting for the third episode of Liar Game to begin.
The suspense left behind by the previous week's episode was still lingering in her mind.
A minority-rule game.
How could there possibly be a guaranteed winning strategy?
And on what grounds could the protagonist, Shinichi, act so outrageously confident?
As soon as the broadcast began, the story did not bother hiding the answer.
"You can't guarantee the two hundred and twenty million. But you can guarantee four million and escape from this game."
Right from the start, Shinichi said those words.
Moe's attention sharpened instantly.
Four million.
That was no small amount either.
From there, the story began to reveal the protagonist's guaranteed winning strategy.
Form a team.
Form a team.
Moe frowned in confusion.
But this was a minority-rule game.
What use was forming a team when the side with fewer votes was the one that won?
Even if people teamed up, how could someone control their allies and deliberately make them lose by voting with the majority?
How was that possible?
Anyone who lost would be burdened with a debt of ten million yen.
No one would willingly do something like that.
By its very nature, the minority-rule game was designed to prevent alliances.
But the explanation that followed left Moe, who had never been good at mathematics, completely stunned.
The instant the organizers explained the rules of minority rule, Shinichi noticed the subtle relationship between each player's ten-million-yen debt and the twenty-two participants.
Suppose Shinichi could draw in six people besides the heroine and form a group.
The most extreme situation in a minority-rule game would be this: in the very first round, the twenty-two players split into a twenty-one-to-one vote. The lone "one" wins and takes the grand prize of two hundred and twenty million yen.
But the most drawn-out situation would look different.
The first round: ten to twelve.
The second round: four to six.
The third round: two to two, a tie. Then tie after tie, repeating until the voting ratio finally became one to three.
In other words, setting aside tied rounds where no one was eliminated, there would be at most three rounds in which players were actually removed from the game.
And as long as one could guarantee a team of eight people, making those eight split their votes evenly between "yes" and "no" every time, the team members would decrease in sequence.
Eight.
Four.
Two.
When only four players remained at the end, it would not matter how many ties occurred. As long as the two remaining team members always split their votes, one choosing "no" and the other choosing "yes," eventually a one-to-three result would appear.
And the person who cast the lone vote and became the final winner would necessarily be one of the original eight team members.
In other words, the eight-person team was guaranteed to secure the grand prize.
With a total reward of two hundred and ten million yen, half would have to be handed over to the organization in order to forfeit the third round and avoid being dragged any further into the game.
That would leave one hundred and five million yen.
After paying off the seventy million yen in debt owed by the other seven teammates, thirty-five million yen would remain.
Divided among eight people, each person could return home with roughly four million yen in profit.
And more importantly, they would all be able to permanently escape that game filled with lies.
The game called Liar Game.
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