Normally, the mere announcement of a title and a few pieces of concept art wouldn't be enough to cause much of a stir among the anime community. However, a new project by Haruto was an entirely different story.
Having broadcast a string of legendary hits like Madoka Magica, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Code Geass, and his earlier masterpieces like To the Moon and Anohana, Haruto's status in the eyes of fans had reached a level bordering on divinity. While that might sound like hyperbole, it was much like the anticipation surrounding a new Hayao Miyazaki film. No matter what the genre or subject matter, fans were guaranteed to wait with bated breath. Based on the titles and concept art Haruto released, fans were already beginning to piece together the identity of these upcoming works.
Naturally, the anime forums were ablaze with speculation within hours.
"Looking at the poster for Bakemonogatari, it features a teenage boy surrounded by several beautiful girls. It's got school rom-com written all over it. But there are also hints of monsters and supernatural phenomena in the background. So, is it a dark fantasy school romance?"
"That seems like a safe bet. In Haruto's entire portfolio, the only pure romance he's ever written was his early shojo work, Blue Spring Ride. Everything else, even Anohana, has some sort of supernatural or fantastical twist."
"Thinking back to Blue Spring Ride always makes me laugh. How can a guy like Haruto write a girl's romance novel with such delicate emotional nuance? It's honestly terrifying."
"Bakemonogatari is such a strange title, but since it's the Warrior of Love, we can already pencil it in as a legendary supernatural romance."
"Then there's Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. That name is a mouthful! Looking at the concept art, it seems to be in the same vein as Code Geass. Definitely a mecha battle series."
"The concept art for Fullmetal Alchemist is interesting too. Alchemy? Is Haruto turning that into a combat system? I'm worried it might be a bit stale. There are so many swords and sorcery or fantasy world works flooding the market right now. It's hard to bring anything new to the table with those themes."
"Exactly. The market is absolutely saturated with isekai stories about heroes and demon kings. Haruto might be talented, but these tropes feel naturally uninspired. It'll be hard even for him to make a breakthrough with this kind of material."
"Don't count him out just yet. People said the same thing about Madoka Magica when it was first announced, and we all know how that turned out. As long as the writing is top-tier, the quality of the work won't be held back by its genre."
"The one that looks the least interesting is Slam Dunk. It's hard to imagine a sports anime reaching legendary status. If I had to rank these four based on potential, I'd say Tengen Toppa is first, Bakemonogatari second, Fullmetal Alchemist third, and Slam Dunk dead last."
"I think you could swap the middle two, but I agree that Slam Dunk is the outlier. Sports anime are practically synonymous with commercial failure. If it weren't Haruto's name on the project, I wouldn't even bother discussing it."
"I'm definitely putting my money on Tengen Toppa. I used to be a Haruto hater until I watched Code Geass and converted. In my opinion, Fullmetal Alchemist looks like a fantasy retread. It's unlikely to flop because the genre has a large base, but it won't be a smash hit either. There are at least thirty of those shows every season, and the audience is too fragmented. As for Slam Dunk, a red-haired delinquent protagonist, a gritty and somewhat rough art style in the concept art, and a boring basketball theme? That's the triple crown of failure. If anyone else wrote this, I'd say they'd lost their mind. But since it's Haruto, it won't flop, but it definitely won't be a hit."
"You really haven't lost that former hater edge, have you? But I agree. Slam Dunk will likely have the worst performance, while Tengen Toppa will benefit from the momentum of Code Geass and take the top spot."
"You guys are unbelievable. The man just released four titles and a few sketches, and you've already decided the ratings and rankings? Isn't there a chance you'll all be eating your words later?"
"Impossible. We've seen enough anime to know how the market works. Tengen Toppa is mecha battle, which is Haruto's current specialty. There is no way a basketball show or a generic fantasy story can compete with that. If the writing quality is equal across all four, the mecha genre wins by default."
Just as Haruto expected, the news of these four projects was so massive that it temporarily eclipsed the hype of Code Geass breaking the all-time viewership record of Madoka Magica. This was the current power Haruto held in the industry. As long as he didn't produce a failure, every new announcement would be met with peak levels of anticipation from millions of fans, providing him with a massive amount of free marketing.
Other animation studios were green with envy. These companies would spend billions of yen producing a show and then millions more on advertising just to get a fraction of the audience to even remember the title.
And even then, the conversion rate was often abysmal.
Yet here was Haruto. Four titles? Four sketches?
And the entire anime community talked about nothing else for twenty-four hours. These fans weren't just making a mental note; they were passionately arguing over which toy was cooler, like children in a playground. This kind of organic engagement was far more effective than any paid advertising campaign.
It was frustrating for his competitors.
By comparison, they all felt like they were failing. Of course, this kind of fame was a double-edged sword. If Haruto ever produced two or three consecutive flops, the backlash from the fans would be catastrophic. It was like a top-tier idol losing their entire career over a single scandal, whereas a minor celebrity could do much worse without anyone noticing. If Haruto ever faltered, a dozen jealous studios would be ready to pounce, spreading the narrative that he had finally run out of talent and was just milking his fans for money.
Not only had he never flopped, but he kept setting new records. He had reached the summit with Madoka Magica right out of the gate, and since he had no rivals left in Japan, he had apparently decided to treat his past self as the only opponent worth beating.
While Haruto's fans were debating the future on the forums, his industry peers were in bars and offices, venting their jealousy to anyone who would listen.
With this, the roadmap for the studio was set for the foreseeable future. A few days after the initial announcement, Haruto's studio also released the investment figures for the four projects.
To everyone's complete shock, the numbers were not what they expected.
Bakemonogatari's first season of twelve episodes had a total budget of 800 million yen. This was high but reasonable for a school-based series that didn't require massive action set-pieces; it was enough to guarantee top-tier production quality.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was slated for twenty-seven episodes with a budget of 1.8 billion yen. As expected, the per-episode cost exceeded the high-end standard of 67 million yen."
Then came Fullmetal Alchemist. There was no word on the total episode count, but the budget for the first twenty-six episodes was announced.
Total investment: 3 billion yen.
The industry was stunned.
Fans and professionals alike were speechless.
3 billion yen for twenty-six episodes meant a per-episode cost of roughly 111 million yen. If this was true, Fullmetal Alchemist would become the third most expensive TV anime in history in terms of per-episode spending.
Was he joking? Everyone knew Haruto's studio was printing money, Code Geass alone was generating ten-figure profits annually, but even for a show as massive as Geass, he had only spent about 90 million yen per episode. Now, for Fullmetal Alchemist, he was adding another 21 million yen on top of that.
As for the fourth show, Slam Dunk...
It was a full-year broadcast consisting of fifty-four episodes.
The total investment was 4.8 billion yen.
Essentially, it was being funded at the same elite production level as Code Geass.
When these numbers were made public, the industry was in an uproar. The budgets for Gurren Lagann and Bakemonogatari were within the realm of high-end normal, but Fullmetal Alchemist and Slam Dunk were completely off the charts. They were being funded as if they were theatrical films rather than weekly TV shows. In animation, you generally get what you pay for. With that much money being poured in, the visual quality was bound to be breathtaking.
"So, in Haruto's own mind, the ranking of importance is Fullmetal Alchemist, then Slam Dunk, then Gurren Lagann, and finally Bakemonogatari?"
"Forget the other two for a second. With that level of investment in FMA and Slam Dunk, Haruto must be incredibly confident. He wouldn't dump that much money into them unless he expected them to perform as well as Cyberpunk or Code Geass. We're talking about billions of yen. No one else in Japan has the earning power to even dream of an investment like this; anyone else would go bankrupt."
"I don't get it. Everyone thought he favored Gurren Lagann, but he's clearly putting his biggest chips on Fullmetal Alchemist."
"Just because he likes it doesn't mean it'll be a hit!"
"Please. He's the creator; he knows his work better than anyone. He's putting the most money into what he thinks is the best story. Are you really going to trust your own guess over his track record?"
"Is he really that rich? These are just the first season budgets, and they already add up to over 10 billion yen. He just decides to spend that like it's pocket change?"
"Who do you think Haruto is? His company has been pulling in over 15 billion yen in pure profit every year. His studio doesn't take outside investors, doesn't take loans, and isn't public, yet it's more profitable than ninety percent of the companies."
"It's terrifying. He hasn't said a word, and yet he's said everything. I have a feeling that with this level of investment and confidence, the next two years are going to be a total Haruto monopoly once again."
"Is that even a surprise? Is there a single year where his studio hasn't dominated the industry?"
"Well, those two original shows his studio made recently were total disasters. They both premiered with scores below 8.0 and are now sitting under a 7.0. The ratings are even worse than their first seasons..."
"Haruto didn't write those, so why are you even bringing them up?"
As the undisputed king of the anime world, a simple budget announcement from Haruto's studio was enough to set the trending topics for the entire night. Haruto saw the chaos online and simply shook his head.
The fans were right about one thing.
The investment levels did reflect his personal ranking of the stories. However, there was a slight nuance.
In his heart, Slam Dunk and Fullmetal Alchemist were on equal footing. The reason Slam Dunk had a slightly lower per-episode cost was simply because basketball animation, while demanding, didn't require the same expensive, high-intensity magical effects and environmental destruction as a supernatural battle series.
Investment reaches a point of diminishing returns eventually. Haruto wasn't chasing a meaningless standard of perfection; he wanted it to be close to perfect. After all, money doesn't grow on trees.
But for Slam Dunk and Fullmetal Alchemist, these two masterpieces were going to be produced as TV series with the visual fidelity of a high-budget theatrical movie.
Back in the other world, Haruto had found the TV animation quality of some of these classics to be a bit lacking by modern standards. Now that he was bringing them to Japan, he wanted to make up for those regrets. Since these were just conceptual announcements, the hype eventually began to settle. As time passed and episodes twenty and twenty-one of Code Geass aired, the show once again reclaimed the center of public attention.
In these episodes, the mysteries surrounding Lelouch, his father, and his supposedly dead but actually hidden mother, Marianne, were finally revealed. In the World of C, Lelouch, C.C., Suzaku, Marianne, and the Emperor, Charles, engaged in a dramatic struggle over the power of Geass and the fate of humanity. Admittedly, this part of the plot was a bit contentious. Given the power and influence Charles possessed, it felt a bit sudden for Lelouch, who had just lost the Black Knights, to pull off a total reversal in the World of C and kill both his parents.
One could only say that arrogance was their downfall. Their greatest sin, however, was not being the protagonist. Emperor Charles had stepped out with a legendary end-game build, assuming he was invincible, and let his guard down.
The writing was a bit rough and felt slightly abrupt, but the hardcore Code Geass fans were willing to forgive the lack of rigor. Having followed the show this far, everyone was aware of the occasional narrative inconsistencies, but they simply didn't care.
What everyone really wanted to see now was Lelouch and C.C. Once the business with his parents was over, the fans wanted it done with. They were all waiting for the real meat of the story: Lelouch ascending the throne as Emperor and teaching the treacherous Black Knights a lesson they would never forget.
Consequently, the ratings for these two episodes hit 6.54% and 6.57% respectively. Far from dropping, the show was still steadily climbing.
With the defeat of Charles and Marianne, and the destruction of their plot to merge all of humanity into a singular, stagnant existence, essentially a version of the Human Instrumentality Project, the story finally entered its final arc.
Lelouch, now the Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire, stood against his former allies in the Black Knights and the combined forces of his brother, Schneizel. The final battle was about to begin.
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