In the end, Mr. Hanz drove Alex out with a face so dark it looked as though every word he had just heard had taken a few years off his life.
He made it very clear that, from then on, whatever Alex wanted to shoot was none of his business. If Alex wanted to go mad, twist genres, play with formats, or turn absurd ideas into commercial hits, that was his problem. But as his first official film entering the mainland market, it absolutely could not be something this unserious.
He had also read the script for Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid.
For someone of his age, the style was, admittedly, a little too strange. Still, even he could tell that it was an interesting story - light, charming, bizarre in a way that was oddly captivating.
The problem lay elsewhere.
Mr. Han was completely certain that this bastard only wanted to film the project to satisfy some shameless personal desire.
After all, the version of Dragon Maid that Alex had handed him was a revised script. In that version, Kobayashi was not a woman, but a man.
Naturally, Alex intended to play the role himself.
Alex merely shrugged, silently lamenting that older people simply did not know how to appreciate art.
Half of summer vacation had already passed.
Meanwhile, Bleach: The Thousand-Year Final War was gradually approaching its climax. The update from the previous week had once again pushed Bleach's popularity to a level no other topic on the internet could even hope to chase.
Whisper's death. Peter losing an arm and a leg. Ichigo Kurosaki's father, Isshin Kurosaki, hovering on the brink of death. And most importantly, Sosuke Aizen wiping out the Gotei 13 along with that line destined to become legendary.
Any one of those moments, taken alone, would have been enough to dominate public discussion for days. Yet the series had thrown all of them into a single episode, as if it had no intention of letting the audience breathe.
After last week's update, fans around the world knew that the Gotei 13 had completely collapsed.
From that point on, all they could do was place their hopes on the protagonist's side turning the tide.
But… could they really do it?
After all, Aizen had already faced the Seireitei twice and achieved overwhelming victories both times.
And worse, every victory had been so clean, so elegant, so brutally beautiful.
"Bro, are we watching Bleach together again today?"
On the set of Nirvana in Fire, the young actor playing Fei Liu looked at Mark, his older-brother figure on the production, with barely concealed anticipation.
Mark nodded without hesitation.
Every week, whenever a new episode of Bleach dropped, he would gather several actors from the crew whom he got along with and watch it together. After all, he was the protagonist of the series. How could he possibly miss a chance to show off in front of his friends?
Even if most Bleach fans firmly believed that Aizen was the true protagonist.
Compared to the relatively harmonious atmosphere among the male actors, things were far more delicate among the actresses on set.
Rebeca Verne, Emily, and Melissa had a relationship that was difficult to define. Even an outsider like Mark knew very well that Emily and Rebeca absolutely did not get along.
Soon, under the expectation of countless viewers, the first August update of Bleach finally arrived.
The new episode opened with the camera slowly sweeping over the captains who had been cut down by Aizen in the previous episode, each of them lying on the ground, barely clinging to life.
Peter. Isshin Kurosaki. Shinji Hirako. Kensei Muguruma.
None of them seemed capable of fighting anymore.
Among them, the most miserable were Peter and Isshin, the former and current captains of the Tenth Division. One had lost his left arm and left leg. The other had nearly been split in half at the waist.
"Dad… Peter…"
Ichigo Kurosaki, who had returned from the Soul King Palace filled with confidence after completing his training, had barely reached the battlefield before Aizen's overwhelming strength struck him like a club to the head.
Boom!
Yet before Ichigo, the protagonist, could even make his next move, another battlefield in the distance to the left of the main group suddenly erupted with a gigantic black pillar of light. The beam was dozens of meters wide and rose more than a hundred meters into the sky, as though it were piercing straight through the heavens above the Seireitei.
Ichigo turned his head toward it, stunned.
He knew that attack all too well.
It was Ulquiorra's Cero Oscuras.
Sure enough, as the towering column of black light slowly scattered, the scene revealed behind it made everyone's blood run cold.
Ulquiorra, in the first stage of his Resurrección, held a dark green spear of energy in his hand.
And impaled upon that spear was Biakuya's body.
"Brother!"
"Captain!"
Rukia and Renji Abarai, who had also returned from training at the Soul King Palace, changed expressions instantly.
Without caring about the consequences, they rushed toward him.
"Don't be reckless! Rukia! Renji!"
Ichigo's face changed dramatically. He had trained alongside both of them, so he naturally knew their current level. And more than that, he understood Ulquiorra's power far too well - the power of an enemy who had defeated him more times than he cared to remember.
"So you've arrived, Ichigo Kurosaki."
Ulquiorra hurled the spear, with Biakuya still impaled upon it, into a nearby wall on the Seireitei's side. Then he looked at Rukia and Renji, who were the first to charge toward him, and immediately prepared to fire another Cero Oscuras.
"Stop right there, Ulquiorra!"
The newly trained Ichigo erupted with a speed that Rukia and Renji could not even hope to match. In an instant, he appeared in front of them and drew the zanpakutō fastened behind his cloak.
Ulquiorra, who was preparing to fire, and Aizen, who had been quietly observing everything, both showed a subtle shift in expression.
Because the weapon Ichigo had drawn was not the Zangetsu from before.
It was a pair of black blades, one long and one short.
The very same two swords that had appeared in Mark's promotional stills before the final season premiered.
"Getsuga Jūjishō!"
A dazzling golden slash tore across the battlefield, suppressing the Cero Oscuras head-on before swallowing it in reverse.
Ulquiorra's pupils contracted violently. Instinctively, he raised one hand to block. The next moment, realizing one hand would not be enough, he immediately lifted the other.
Even so, he was still blasted far back by the force.
He actually sent Ulquiorra flying?
That's an epic-level power-up!
Ichigo hasn't even used Bankai yet, right?
But the Seireitei's losses are already too brutal. Can he really handle this alone?
It was no wonder the audience was shocked.
Previously, Ulquiorra's first-stage Resurrección had already beaten Ichigo senseless even when Ichigo used Bankai and Hollowfication. Yet now, Ichigo had neither released Bankai nor used Hollowfication, and still forced Ulquiorra back with a single strike.
The contrast was simply too exaggerated.
Taking advantage of the opening created by Ulquiorra's retreat, Rukia and Renji hurried to Biakuya, who was still pinned against the wall, and carefully lowered him down.
"Brother! Are you all right? Brother!"
Just as shown in the trailer, Rukia's former long hair was gone, replaced by shoulder-length strands that made her panic look even more raw as she cried out to Biakuya, now drenched in blood.
If it had been any other time, Biakuya would have immediately answered the younger sister he cherished most.
But this time, with unconsciousness - or perhaps death itself - only a breath away, his final gaze was not fixed on Rukia.
It was fixed on Ichigo Kurosaki.
"Ichigo Kurosaki… I… am nearing my limit…"
Biakuya's first words left not only the characters around him frozen, but also the Bleach fans in front of their screens stunned.
Although many had already sensed that something terrible was coming, it was still far too cruel to confirm that Alex truly intended to bring the blade down on one of the series' most popular characters.
"Brother! Don't speak! Please don't speak! I'll take you to the Fourth Division right now, they'll heal - "
Before Rukia, already in tears, could finish, Biakuya gathered the last thread of breath in his lungs and continued.
"I am a captain of the Gotei 13… and yet I failed to defeat the vile enemies who trampled the Seireitei. Because of my weakness, countless soldiers died, and their friends and families were thrown into grief…"
"In the end, I was defeated miserably in battle… and now I am dying in disgrace."
"From the bottom of my heart… I am ashamed of myself…"
As he spoke, a tear slipped from the corner of Biakuya's eye.
And in that instant, the audience felt their hearts clench violently.
Especially because Biakuya, always cold, noble, and distant, was now speaking in a voice choked with tears. The impact of it surpassed almost any other character's sorrow. This was not merely sadness. It was the collapse of a man who had never allowed the world to see his weakness.
"You are human… You should never have been dragged into this war… In truth, you should not even be standing here…"
"But I must ask one final thing of you… Forgive me for making such a shameful plea… please…"
By then, the tears on Biakuya's face had already mixed with blood.
That devastated expression, so far removed from the cold and imposing captain the fans knew, was something hundreds of millions of viewers around the world had never seen on his face before.
And he had said "please."
"Please… protect the Soul Society… Ichigo… Kurosaki…"
When he finished saying those words, Biakuya's head fell weakly.
Beside him, Rukia, who had been supporting him in her arms, saw her pupils contract violently. Just like Peter in the previous episode, she let out a desperate cry that tore through the skies above the Seireitei.
"Brother - !"
With that grief-stricken scream from the female lead, this man, as romantic and fragile as cherry blossoms scattered by the wind, completed his final song.
Alex had thought for a very long time about how to close Biakuya's story.
Before crossing into this world, when he watched the animated version of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, he had always felt that the best-written moment was not Yamamoto's visually overwhelming Bankai, no matter how spectacular it was.
To him, the true peak was Biakuya's heartfelt plea to Ichigo Kurosaki.
The tragic atmosphere of that scene was no less powerful than the legendary moments in which a dying mentor entrusts his final hope to the disciple left behind.
If Biakuya died at that exact moment, Alex believed it would inevitably become one of Bleach's defining scenes.
Perhaps, in his previous life, the original author had hesitated because Biakuya's popularity was simply too high. Or perhaps he had considered that the character would still be needed after the Thousand-Year Blood War arc.
But Alex had no such concerns.
The final season of Bleach that he was filming was final in the truest sense of the word.
The moment Aizen left the stage, the IP itself would reach its complete conclusion.
He had no intention of sucking the blood of an old franchise until it became something like Boruto.
That was far too disgusting.
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