Over the following weeks, the ratings for Liar Game stabilized at around 5.2%.
A work like that was very good at drawing attention quickly. The concept was strong, the suspense was gripping, and watching people use every possible method to win carried an almost poisonous appeal. But precisely because of that, it was also difficult for it to reach an absurdly high rating.
Some viewers looked at the story and felt that the world had always been built on lies, manipulation, and games of interest. To them, the ruthless strategies in the series did not feel exaggerated. They felt almost too honest.
But in Japan, there was also a large portion of the audience that rejected those values. Others simply did not enjoy watching a drama that demanded so much attention, calculation, and interpretation from the very first episode. For them, Liar Game was exhausting before it ever became addictive.
After several weeks hovering around the same 5.2%, the Japanese television industry had more or less reached a consensus: that was the ceiling for the drama's ratings.
In the animation field, the upper limit of The Demon of Time had also begun to reveal itself. After rising to around 5.4%, the work spent several consecutive weeks fluctuating within that range.
Its approval rating remained high, but its viewership could no longer climb.
The same was true for AD. The anime held steady in third place for the quarter, basically remaining around 5.2%.
The second-ranked anime of the cour, Crimson Scales, stabilized near 5.3%.
As for the others, such as The Mystery of the Dark Detective and Sea of Clouds, their ratings wandered around 5.1%.
All of those animated works were two-cour productions.
Although those numbers and rankings only reflected the situation during the winter cour, in most cases, this kind of performance would remain largely unchanged even after the spring cour began.
After all, works like Re:Zero, which exploded in the later stages and saw their ratings surge after a slow build, were exceptions.
For most titles, early popularity determined later popularity.
And in the statistics compiled by the mainstream anime media, Steins;Gate, whose ratings continued to linger below 5%, was practically outside the center of attention.
Its performance was not bad. Far from it. But since it ranked only sixth in viewership that quarter, the Japanese media simply did not have that much space - or that much interest - to constantly report on it.
Even so, in silence, the score for Steins;Gate had already climbed back to 9.0.
A cell phone, a microwave, a computer, and the downstairs landlord's television, which was placed beneath the microwave and turned on and off irregularly through the floor between them.
Through a chain of coincidences, those things formed the simplest possible time machine: the "Phone Microwave."
During its operation, every second the microwave heated allowed a text message of up to 36 kb to be sent one hour into the past.
If the microwave heated for one hundred and twenty seconds, the message could be sent five days back.
That was why, in the first episode, the message sent by the protagonist, Rintaro, saying that Makise had been stabbed, ended up reaching the past.
There was no grand destiny behind it.
It was only coincidence.
But while investigating that accidental phenomenon, Rintaro truly ended up creating it together with the genius scientist Makise, the hacker Daru, and the sweet, airheaded Mayuri Shiina.
Later, Moeka Kiryu, the melancholic and mysterious woman searching for the old IBN 5100 computer, accidentally discovered what they were doing. Rintaro then invited her to join the Future Gadget Laboratory as member number 005.
The anime spent seven episodes finally introducing its main cast, the key device known as the Phone Microwave, the antagonist organization SERN, the time traveler John Titor, and the suspicious elements surrounding Suzuha Amane, the part-time warrior who worked downstairs.
From the seventh episode onward, the story truly entered its main route.
What would a person do after obtaining a machine capable of sending information into the past?
Naturally, they would experiment.
In the seventh episode, Rintaro sent his past self the numbers of a lottery ticket that would win third prize.
And he almost won.
The problem was that he asked the delicate Ruka Urushibara to buy the ticket. Ruka ended up entering one number incorrectly, and in the end, the prize slipped away.
Even so, that failure gave birth to a new rule.
Sending messages to the past altered the world line.
And when the world line changed, everyone's memories were rewritten as well.
In the world line where the lottery was nearly won, for example, the members of the Future Gadget Laboratory completely forgot that they had carried out that experiment with Rintaro.
Everyone except him.
That was the essential reason Rintaro was the protagonist.
Among seven billion people in the world, he was the only one capable of crossing changes in world lines while retaining the memories of the previous one.
At the same time, his text conversations with John Titor pointed toward the objective he needed to pursue from then on.
In order to prevent the world from falling under SERN's control in the future, perhaps Rintaro could use his own hands and the Phone Microwave to guide reality toward a world line whose divergence rate exceeded 1%.
In the eighth episode, Moeka Kiryu wanted to send a message warning herself, four days earlier, not to change phones, because the new one was terrible.
But that message was suspicious from the start. After she sent it, in the new world line, she had never joined the Future Gadget Laboratory at all.
Then came Ruka Urushibara, the feminine-looking boy who wanted to become a girl.
His wish was to send a message to his mother, who had still been pregnant with him many years earlier, asking her to eat more vegetables so he would be born female.
Of course, that kind of plot development was far too problematic. Anyone with basic high school biology knowledge knew that a person's chromosomal sex was determined at the beginning of pregnancy and had no direct relationship with what the mother ate or did while pregnant.
For that reason, in the Japanese version of the anime, Sora used every bit of knowledge he could gather to adjust the logic of the story. Ruka was defined as someone with a rare chromosomal condition: although she possessed XX chromosomes, biologically associated with the female sex, her physical development had ended up presenting male characteristics.
From there, the story established that if this condition were treated during pregnancy, it would be possible to prevent the emergence of male characteristics during Ruka's growth and allow her to develop as a girl.
It was not something Sora had simply made up. Before transmigrating into that world, he had seen news about women who, while preparing for marriage and undergoing medical examinations with their fiancés, discovered that they possessed XY chromosomes and were physiologically classified as male. Cases like that were not as rare as the public imagined.
And then the world line truly changed.
In the new reality, Ruka had developed as a girl.
But the alteration of the world line also brought a consequence: the old IBN 5100 computer they had previously found was no longer in their possession in this new reality.
In the eighth and ninth episodes, the wealthy heiress Faris wanted to send a message to her father in the past, warning him to avoid the car accident that would take his life.
In the tenth episode, Suzuha Amane ran all over the place trying to meet the father she had never known. However, on the day arranged for the Future Gadget Laboratory's dinner meeting, she did not appear. Worse, she vanished completely.
Worried, Rintaro used the Phone Microwave to send a message to his self from the previous day, ordering him to follow and protect Suzuha.
And indeed, after a full night of heavy rain, the Suzuha of the next day did not disappear.
Only regret remained. The day before, she had failed to meet her father at the exact time and place where, according to the information she possessed, he was supposed to appear without fail.
Then came the eleventh episode.
In it, Rintaro listened as Makise opened up about her father. Because he was jealous of his own daughter's scientific talent, he had always treated her with coldness and cruelty. Even though she tried to repair that father-daughter relationship, his words wounded her again and again.
At the same time, Rintaro also realized an uncomfortable truth: they, who were researching a time machine, had been observed by a dangerous organization.
With that, time advanced to mid-March.
The winter cour was practically over.
Since its fourth episode, Liar Game had never once left first place among television dramas.
In the animation sector, the top six positions had also remained unchanged.
The Demon of Time was first. The first season of AD was third. Steins;Gate was sixth.
As the end of the quarter approached, both fans and haters of Sora emerged at the same time.
On NatsuYume, public opinion looked like a battlefield.
"What's this nonsense about being a slow-burn work? What's this nonsense about surpassing Re:Zero? What a joke. Steins;Gate has already aired almost its entire first season, and the latest episode only got 4.97% ratings. The gap between it and Re:Zero is like heaven and earth."
"So what? Since when is 4.97% bad? Two years ago, that would have been enough to win the quarter."
"Do the haters only see Steins;Gate? AD is doing very well too. Why don't you show up to mock that one as well?"
"Third place for the quarter counts as doing well now? I laughed."
"Tsk, tsk. This is why you haters are such a joke. On one hand, you keep belittling Kantoku Sora. On the other, you force a bunch of absurd performance standards onto him that nobody asked for. Since when, in the Japanese anime industry, can a work with 5.2% ratings, third place in the cour, and a 9.3 score be considered a failure? If you think he's that incapable, why do you expect so much from him?"
"Wasn't it your so-called invincible Kantoku Sora who said that both Steins;Gate and AD would surpass Re:Zero? We're only mocking him because he can't fulfill his promise. Are you going to deny that?"
"Exactly. What we enjoy most is laughing at those so-called geniuses who brag, talk big, and then get slapped in the face. Is that not allowed?"
"Steins;Gate is a two-cour series. Don't celebrate too early. I have a feeling that when the spring cour begins, this so-called slow-burn story will finally show its strength. Next quarter, when you get hit by the counterattack, I'll dig up every single one of your posts. Don't pretend to be dead when the time comes."
"You people really think he's a god? Sure, Re:Zero improved in the later stages, but now you expect both Steins;Gate and AD to have the same luck? Luck doesn't favor the same person twice. Wake up."
Sora was famous now, and fame always came with conflict.
He did not need to do anything special.
As long as the media continued reporting how much money 5 Centimeters per Second had earned, how well Liar Game was performing, and how high the merchandise sales for Re:Zero remained, the resentful few - those who hated seeing others succeed - would keep appearing without end.
That kind of thing existed in any world.
From Sora's point of view, however, he actually liked those people.
If he had no power to reverse that negative public opinion, those haters truly could have hindered the growth of his works.
But at that moment, Sora saw them only as free promotional tools.
Perhaps Steins;Gate did not have as many viewers as Re:Zero, but its level of recognition was not far behind.
And that was precisely because the haters spent every day ridiculing it. Even people who had never watched the anime already knew it existed.
When the work finally began to reveal its true strength, those people's actions would unleash immense potential.
If a work criticized by so many people across the internet later ended up being praised by that same entire internet, what better publicity campaign could there possibly be?
Sometimes, one hater really was worth three fans.
But for now, other things were already in motion.
Back in February, Sora had already redeemed the second season of AD from the system space and established the company's third project team.
In addition, after reaching new cooperation terms with the Southern Alliance of Broadcasters for the second season of Liar Game in early March, the contract was officially signed that day.
The profit share from the work's copyright would increase. In exchange, Sora would need to cooperate to a certain extent with the drama's promotional activities.
Looking at his schedule for the spring cour, Sora could not hide his headache.
"But with this, the second season of Liar Game will most likely continue holding the top spot in drama ratings during the spring cour. And Steins;Gate has finally made it through its long setup phase. Now it begins to show its strength."
Expectation shone in Sora's eyes.
After redeeming AD, the emotional value accumulated in his system space had been almost completely exhausted. He was counting on the turning point of Steins;Gate and the plot of Liar Game's second season to contribute a huge amount of emotional value, enough for him to redeem the new works he had his eye on.
In late March, the twelfth episode of Steins;Gate aired.
In that episode's story, Makise, the genius scientist, used Daru to hack into SERN's website and obtain research results related to time experiments, thereby developing an improved version of the new time machine.
A cell phone, a microwave, television signal interference, and the assistance of a computer and headphones.
With those elements, it became possible to transform a person's brain waves into signals transmitted by phone and send them back into the past.
In other words, the memories of the future self would be transferred directly into the brain of the past self.
This was no longer as simple as sending a text message.
It was time travel on the level of the soul.
The maximum transfer limit was forty-eight hours into the past.
But on the very day the protagonist and the others completed that discovery - more precisely, on the night Rintaro realized the danger of that research and decided to hand all their results over to the government - the mysterious organization appeared.
An armed group invaded Rintaro's home.
"Huh...? Why did Mayuri's pocket watch stop?"
After saying those words, Mayuri Shiina, the gentlest, most adorable, most naturally airheaded girl in the entire work, was shot in the head.
That night, in that instant, all the fans watching Steins;Gate were shocked to see an anime that had, until then, been marked by an everyday atmosphere of mystery and investigation suddenly transform into a story with an armed invasion and the death of one of its heroines.
But no one panicked.
After all, what was this work about?
A time machine.
The protagonist and Makise, the heroine, had already created a machine capable of sending consciousness two days into the past.
So going back to save Mayuri Shiina should be simple, shouldn't it?
At that moment, the viewers still did not realize it.
Over the next three months, those words spoken by Mayuri Shiina before her death would become a curse. On every late-night broadcast day of Steins;Gate, they would return to torment the fans until none of them could sleep.
___________________________________________________________________________________
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!