pjbooks Chapter 328: Year-End
Chapter 328: Year-End
Illumination Production Company had lost count of how many times it had launched a new anime project based on Rei’s requirements.
Everyone in the company had come to understand that their principal shareholder, currently the most prominent creator in Japan’s animation industry, operated on a creative timeline that bore no relationship to what any normal production schedule would suggest was reasonable.
The surge of his inspiration exceeded what the people around him could model.
The projects currently in production had often been initiated from scripts Rei had submitted to the relevant teams a year or two earlier.
The Demon Slayer animated films and the other theatrical releases scheduled across the next three to four years had received their scripts two years ago.
Summer Time Rendering had been the most recent new submission before this one, nine months earlier by the script handover date.
After Himari announced an internal talent search for the new Bleach production team, the various factions within Illumination Production Company became active.
Japan’s animation industry carried its own internal geography. The Tokyo faction, the regional coastal city circles, the Osaka contingent: these groups had been competing for professional standing and project allocation for years before Rei had recruited their best people into the same building.
The rivalries had not dissolved. They had relocated indoors and intensified.
Rei was aware of this and had made a deliberate decision to let Himari allow it to continue.
Illumination Production Company held a position in Japan’s animation industry that faced no meaningful external competition.
In the absence of external pressure, internal pressure served the same function: keeping the top teams performing at their actual ceiling and ensuring that the best production assignments went to the people who had demonstrated they could handle them.
The highest-investment works went to the most capable teams. The lower commercial value projects went to teams still developing. The individual income differences between these assignments were significant, which meant the competition for position was genuine.
The internal movement naturally leaked outward through the various channels that industry information always found. External media and industry professionals were not slow to read the indicators. Within a few days, the news that Shirogane-sensei was planning a new large-budget work had spread through Japan’s animation community.
This gave Rei’s fans a discussion topic running parallel to the Attack on Titan plot speculation.
Late November.
The seventh episode of Attack on Titan Season Two aired following the sixth episode’s historic reception.
One week of buildup, and then the episode delivered what the Reiner and Bertholdt reveal had been building toward: the fight.
Eren’s first genuinely impressive combat performance. Using the joint lock techniques he had learned from Annie during Cadet Corps training against the person who had trained him in them in the first place: applied against Reiner in Armored Titan form, and actually working.
The Armored Titan being forced into a losing position by a technique derived from an enemy’s own teaching.
The viewership rating for the seventh episode broke eight percent for the first time in the series.
Then the Colossal Titan fell from the top of the wall and the impact knocked Eren unconscious. Reiner seized him. Bertholdt seized Ymir. The two of them fled in the direction away from the forest, toward a destination outside the walls that the Survey Corps had no immediate way to pursue.
The eighth episode: the Survey Corps unable to act while the horses were being prepared, watching helplessly as the Armored Titan disappeared over the horizon. Then the full mobilisation, every member in gear, heading in the direction Reiner had fled.
Two weeks of setup for the pursuit arc.
The fans, having experienced the release of episode six, found the return to building pace difficult to absorb.
"The main plot has not moved significantly in two weeks."
"They had Ymir. If they could have interrogated her the world-building secrets would have been revealed. One step away, and Ymir is taken again."
"Eren beat Reiner in direct combat and then was knocked unconscious by a falling Colossal Titan and is now a prisoner with his hands cut off so he cannot transform. The protagonist defeated the antagonist and ended the episode as a captive. This is a genuinely unusual sequence of outcomes."
"Shirogane-sensei has a new hot-blooded work in project approval according to the media. Illumination Production Company has started forming the production team. The news has been leaking through industry channels."
"Long-running series comparable to Hunter x Hunter. Hot-blooded battle. That is all the specific information available."
"They are already planning what happens after AOT concludes. Shirogane-sensei."
"AOT finishing will probably take at least another year depending on whether the later plot has filler."
"Why does everyone keep calling the AOT plot filler? Without the buildup, would episode six have hit the way it hit? Without the portrayal of the friendship between Reiner and Eren across two seasons, would the betrayal reveal have produced what it produced? The pacing is the mechanism. Remove the pacing and the payoff does not exist."
"Watching AOT weekly is agonising by design. Binge-watching it after completion will be a completely different experience. As a completed work it will be an absolute masterpiece."
November ended. December arrived.
In early December, Rei participated in a book signing event organised with Hoshimori Group to launch the first Attack on Titan manga tankōbon volume.
First-week sales: 184 million copies.
The reason this figure was described as very impressive rather than record-breaking was the existence of a specific comparison point. The Demon Slayer Infinity Castle Arc manga tankōbon had achieved 260 million copies in its first week. A pure, substantial lead.
Attack on Titan’s global popularity was real and significant. The manga’s commercial ceiling was genuinely high. But Demon Slayer’s mass-market reach, which extended to demographics that battle-focused darker works could not access at the same depth, had produced numbers that would be very difficult for any subsequent property to match.
Hoshimori Group was entirely satisfied with the result regardless of the comparison. How easily could a work like Demon Slayer be surpassed? Most likely, that record would stand as Shirogane-sensei’s own career benchmark indefinitely.
Mid-December arrived.
The tenth episode of Attack on Titan Season Two was airing that evening.
Rei posted on his creator account.
"In tonight’s Titan episode, there is a very beautiful song being released."
The post became an immediate discussion focus.
"A new insert song?"
"Will it be better than the betrayal arc piece from episode six?"
"The music quality in this anime cannot be criticised even when the pacing can. Every praised track has Shirogane-sensei as composer."
"The reason people do not discuss Shirogane-sensei’s composing ability as frequently as his writing is that his scriptwriting and storyboard work are so exceptional that they overshadow it.
For context: over forty percent of the storyboards for this anime were framework drafts provided by Shirogane-sensei himself. The mother’s death scene in Season One. The episode where Eren is eaten. The hole-plugging sequence. The betrayal reveal in Season Two Episode Six. Every sequence the audience has praised was built from a storyboard framework Shirogane-sensei provided, with the animation director making the detailed adjustments."
"Then why does his name not appear in the animation director column? He should have at minimum a co-director credit."
"He apparently wants to keep a low profile. The industry already discusses him as though he is operating outside normal human parameters. Adding an animation director credit would make the situation even more difficult to present as something a person could accomplish."
"Afraid some research institution will acquire him for study. Seriously though: when you look at his cumulative output across seven or eight years, the money is secondary. The creative volume is the genuinely frightening part."
"Genius is the only available explanation."
"Among the anime creators that casual fans know, every single one is a one-in-a-million talent. In front of Shirogane-sensei, even those people experience dimensional suppression."
Rei had posted a single casual line about a good song appearing in the evening’s episode. The fans had extended it into a discussion spanning his entire career’s creative output before the episode had even aired.
Interest in the specific song being announced was, honestly, not particularly elevated. The betrayal arc music from episode six had set a standard that was difficult to anticipate being matched. But since Shirogane-sensei had posted the reminder, people paid attention.
Seven o’clock. Ion TV’s viewership began climbing.
Eight o’clock. The opening theme played.
Attack on Titan Season Two, Episode Ten.
Kenji Mori, a young anime fan who had recently resigned from his job and was temporarily between employment, moved his attention from the forums to the television.
In Rei’s assessment, the final three episodes of Season Two were second in quality only to the final battle arc of Season Three. Starting from the tenth episode, the episodes moved through a sequence of devastating, oppressive, and then unexpectedly healing plot beats in quick succession. The reminder had not been casual.
The episode picked up from where the previous one had left it.
Eren, bound hand and foot after losing his ability to transform, was being carried by Reiner and the others as they moved toward their destination. During the journey, Ymir, who had previously reached an understanding with Reiner and Bertholdt, temporarily reversed her position.
She stated her terms clearly.
She believed the world inside the walls had no future and would eventually be destroyed regardless of what anyone did. The fate of that world was not her concern. What concerned her was Krista’s future.
She wanted Reiner and Bertholdt to take Krista with them when they took her and Eren. If they refused, she would transform in the forest and fight Bertholdt, who had expended his Colossal Titan transformation, and Reiner, who was still in his recovery period.
Ymir’s feelings for Krista are definitely beyond friendship, Kenji thought.
An ordinary close friend did not negotiate hostage terms on behalf of someone else using herself as the bargaining chip. Would it be an exaggeration to describe Ymir and Krista as something more than friends? Looking at the accumulated evidence across two seasons: probably not an exaggeration.
Is Shirogane-sensei moving away from boy-girl romance and preparing something different?
The thought produced a specific interest in what came next.
The plot moved quickly. Krista, following the Survey Corps in pursuit of Eren’s group, was already closing the distance on horseback.
Then the episode entered a flashback.
The original manga had handled Ymir’s backstory with deliberate restraint, leaving most of it as implication. The anime in Rei’s previous life had provided more. Rei had considered following the manga’s pacing but had ultimately kept the anime’s expanded flashback.
The curiosity it generated in the audience, the specific questions it opened about the truth of the world, was worth the time it took.
So when the Ymir flashback began, Kenji found himself immediately unable to construct a coherent framework for what he was seeing.
A street child. Picked up by people from a religious organisation. Made the designated successor of a royal bloodline. Becoming the object of worship for everyone within the religion.
The religion was clearly not accepted by the world where Ymir had grown up.
Kenji initially assumed this was set inside the walls. As he kept watching, the inconsistencies accumulated. The clothing styles of the characters were wrong for the interior.
And within the walls, nobody would worship someone for possessing royal blood, because the royal bloodline had never been absent. The King had always been present. The lineage had always ruled.
The plot details did not fit the world inside the walls.
They fit the world outside.
Although the fan community had long theorised that another human civilisation existed beyond the walls, this was the first time the anime had depicted it directly.
Kenji sat up straighter.
In this outside world, Ymir had been provided for and worshipped as a false royal successor by her followers. Then the ruling authorities of that world had arrested her. Her followers were slaughtered. She was tortured and imprisoned. When the executioner asked whether she truly possessed royal blood, Ymir, knowing what the admission would cost her, confirmed it calmly. To spare the surviving believers from death, she took the consequence onto herself.
Kenji understood several things at once.
Why she had dedicated herself to Krista. Why she had insisted so forcefully that Krista live for her own sake rather than for the approval of others. Ymir as a child had lived entirely inside other people’s expectations, performing the role assigned to her by people who needed her to be something.
When she saw Krista doing the same thing, the anger and the sympathy were personal. She recognised it from the inside.
But how had Ymir travelled from the outside world to the interior of the walls?
The question formed before the episode answered it.
The scene that produced the largest response in Kenji arrived next.
Ymir, condemned for admitting to royal blood, was brought to an execution site.
The anime did not show the method of execution directly.
Only: the moment Ymir was pushed from the height, a flash of yellow light appeared.
The light of a Titan transformation.
And the Titan Ymir became appeared on screen.
The BGM shifted to a piano melody, soothing and sorrowful simultaneously.
Kenji’s expression was blank.
It was not only Ymir who transformed.
The followers of her sect who had been executed alongside her also transformed.
And the expressions on their faces in the moments before death: terror. Not the terror of dying. The terror of what was being done to them. Of understanding what the punishment actually was.
The punishment for these people was being transformed into Titans.
The anime did not state the conclusion explicitly. It did not need to.
Titans did not appear from nowhere.
They were not a separate species.
Titans were transformed humans.
Kenji’s head was completely spinning.
Who said Shirogane-sensei was not advancing the main plot. Who was that. Is he not advancing it right now.
A single episode had delivered the fundamental truth of the world: the origin of the Titans. Not as a direct statement but as an inference, clear enough that every viewer who had been paying attention would arrive at the same place simultaneously.