Throughout the entire interview, Yuta and Natsuki Takase covered a lot of ground. He talked about the meaning behind the name "Clannad," what happened during the voice auditions, funny stories from the production process, and more.
As for Starfall's previous work, Heartbeat House, neither of them brought it up even once. It was as if Starfall had never made it.
That evening, Yuta treated Natsuki to dinner.
The cameraman was included too, of course.
Not showing his face was one thing. That didn't mean the cameraman had nothing to shoot.
April 10th, Monday.
The interview article finally went live, and it immediately set the anime community buzzing.
"The script was never changed? I thought for sure we were watching a revised version."
"No special talent, just average skill level. How is that something a human being says?"
"Thank god President Shido stuck to his guns. Otherwise we'd have gotten another Love Academy."
"We were wrong about President Shido. We were wrong about Starfall."
"Genma Wasabi is disgusting. He almost ruined a great anime just because of his weird personal preferences. He had the nerve to say President Shido didn't understand anime? If you ask me, he's the one who doesn't understand anime."
"I can't even sit through Love Academy. Do they think audiences are still stuck in 2005?"
"Genma Wasabi is gross, and Lumen isn't much better. They publicly trashed Clannad's project just to recruit Wasabi as their director. Absolutely shameless."
...
Everything played out exactly as Yuta had predicted.
Public opinion did a complete one-eighty.
Before, everyone had been piling on Yuta and trashing Starfall. Now the tables had turned, and everyone was going after Genma Wasabi and Kaito Amanai instead. Even Lumen as a whole was getting caught in the crossfire.
Though to be fair, when Kaito recruited Genma to direct Love Academy, Lumen had been the one benefiting from the whole situation. So saying they were innocent bystanders getting dragged into it wasn't quite accurate either.
In any case, the negative buzz around Yuta and Starfall vanished completely, replaced by a wave of praise.
"President Shido is seriously incredible."
"I'm officially declaring President Shido my idol from this day forward."
"He said there are tons of foreshadowing threads planted from the very first episode? Guess I need to record every episode from now on and rewatch them."
"Starfall had everything working against them and got sabotaged on top of that, but they still managed to make an anime this good. That's genuinely impressive."
...
With the entire community caught up in the discussion, Clannad's popularity soared even higher.
Meanwhile, Love Academy was taking hits because of Genma and Kaito.
A growing number of viewers were boycotting it. The show's popularity wasn't going to evaporate overnight, but a significant chunk was definitely bleeding over to Clannad.
While the internet was still buzzing, Arcane ramped up their promotional push in a big way.
TBS also committed resources to promoting Clannad.
Even the voice actors working on Clannad got in on the action, showing up at various events. It boosted their own profiles while simultaneously promoting the anime.
So by April 14th, when Clannad's second episode aired, both the ratings and the buzz exploded upward.
As for Lumen's Love Academy, its first episode had actually pulled higher ratings than Clannad. But by the time the second episode aired, the numbers didn't just fail to climb. They dropped sharply, and the gap between the two shows was suddenly reversed.
Inside Lumen's conference room.
Both Kaito and Genma looked terrible.
After the first episode aired, they thought they had it in the bag. They thought Clannad was no threat at all. They had even been eyeing the top spot among the season's anime.
But now, all of that had turned to smoke.
Forget competing for the number one spot. Just keeping Love Academy's audience from bleeding out was a major problem.
The online backlash had already dealt serious damage to Love Academy's popularity.
Even if the story got better from here, the moment people saw Kaito and Genma's names attached to it, their interest would probably drop in half.
And the worst part was that momentum was completely on Yuta's side, on Starfall's side. Anything Lumen said or did at this point would only make things worse.
They couldn't respond.
But doing nothing and just hiding like turtles wasn't going to work either. If they stayed silent, Love Academy's audience was going to bleed out completely sooner or later.
"So what do we do now? Is there any way to turn this around?" Genma looked at Kaito.
Kaito didn't answer right away. He thought for a moment before speaking. "We need to knock Clannad's popularity down a peg. Only if Clannad takes a hit do we have a chance at a comeback."
"I know that much. The question is how," Genma said with a pained look.
Kaito thought it over and asked, "You read the first three episodes of Clannad's script. How much do you remember?"
"You want me to leak their third episode's script?" Genma's eyes went wide.
He quickly shut it down. "No way. Setting aside the fact that I've already forgotten most of it, if something like that ever got traced back to me, my career as a director would be over."
"I'm not asking you to leak the script. I just wanted to get a sense of where the story is heading," Kaito explained. "If you don't remember, forget it. It's not strictly necessary."
"You already have a plan?" Genma asked eagerly.
"I have an idea."
Kaito nodded. "Given how things stand, trying to smear them again would obviously backfire. So we do the opposite."
"The opposite? You mean hype Clannad up?" Genma was confused.
"Not exactly hype."
Kaito smiled. "If I remember correctly, when that Shido guy went to Arcane to pitch for investment, he said they were making an anime that was upbeat with a touch of sadness. He also said that even though it was a bishoujo anime, the real focus was on being heartwarming and healing."
"That sounds right," Genma confirmed.
"So what do you think would happen if we quietly started pushing the narrative online, really playing up the heartwarming and tearjerker elements, telling everyone this anime is going to make them cry? What then?" Kaito asked with a grin.
Genma froze for a second, then said with some skepticism, "If the anime can't actually deliver on the tearjerker front, that would definitely hurt their popularity. But I suspect Starfall's anime really can move audiences. I think it really could make people cry."
"No, no, no. You don't get it."
Kaito waved dismissively. "Generally speaking, all emotional impact works best when it catches you off guard. If someone keeps telling you over and over before you even watch it that this anime is incredibly moving, that it'll make you bawl your eyes out, are you really still going to be moved when you actually sit down and watch it? Can you really still be healed?"
Genma fell silent, mulling it over.
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