At noon, the audience rating for the twenty-fourth episode of Steins;Gate was released.
6.13%.
It was a number capable of shaking the entire Japanese anime industry. And yet, when it appeared before everyone's eyes, no one could truly call it unexpected.
Even before Steins;Gate premiered, Sora was already a creator with enormous popularity in the Japanese animation scene. During the early stage of the broadcast, when the story was still moving slowly, planting clues and laying the groundwork, Liar Game had also sustained his momentum, keeping his name hot among both audiences and the media.
But from the middle of the season onward, Steins;Gate began to ascend episode by episode, spiraling into madness until it reached its peak with episode twenty-four.
Twist after twist. Foreshadowing planted since the beginning surfaced one after another. Every episode seemed to test the viewers' comprehension, memory, and even patience. After all, if someone had forgotten the details of the earlier episodes because of the long broadcast period, many scenes simply would not make sense. It was almost necessary to search online for explanations and plot analyses just to keep up with every layer of the story.
Even so, millions upon millions of anime fans across Japan joined the ranks of those following the series week after week.
The night before, they had become the force that pushed Steins;Gate into breaking the anime ratings record of the past ten years.
After the number was announced, the entire industry fell silent.
Sora still had a few months left before turning twenty-two. However, after Steins;Gate, his position in the industry could no longer be measured by ordinary standards. He had leapt from being a young prodigy to someone capable of standing beside those ancient gods of animation, legendary creators who had long since retired - or were no longer alive.
In Japan, status within the anime industry was always determined by results.
Even twenty years ago, during the golden age of national animation, when the youth population was at its highest proportion since the postwar era, technology had not yet advanced so far, entertainment options were less diverse, and families spent entire nights in front of the television, a work that surpassed 6% in ratings would have been considered almost unbelievable.
And Sora had achieved that with two consecutive anime.
That day, Japan's major media outlets published comments and articles about Steins;Gate at a frantic pace.
"A divine work is born: Steins;Gate reaches a perfect conclusion."
"Foreshadowing planted from episode one all the way to episode twenty-four. Sora's genius can no longer be questioned."
"Twenty-two years old. An age when most Japanese university students have not even graduated yet. And yet, Sora has already become one of the people standing at the very top of an entire industry."
"Invincible. Perhaps only this word can describe Steins;Gate."
"No collapse at the finish line. No betrayal of the audience. Fans of Steins;Gate can sleep peacefully over the next few days. A work bearing Sora's name never ends in mediocrity."
"A divine plot. A divine ending. This conclusion is worthy of the attention the work received, and worthy of Sora's title as the leading figure of Japan's new generation of animators."
"What kind of genius does one have to be to create a work like Steins;Gate?"
"Many people may disagree, but in my eyes, Steins;Gate is the strongest Japanese anime of the past ten years."
"Unlike Re:Zero, Steins;Gate goes even deeper in terms of narrative depth."
The media's endless chain of praise left Southern Alliance TV beaming.
How many years had that broadcaster remained only fifth among Japan's major networks? In every division, its results had always been modest, never bright enough to threaten the giants. Until two years earlier, when it brought Sora into its orbit and began climbing to the top in the field of animation.
This season, the situation had become even more absurd. With Liar Game in the television drama sector and Steins;Gate in anime, the network had reached first place in both fields at the same time.
But the most important point was something else.
This season, the four major networks had invested huge sums to bring back established names from the anime industry in an obvious attempt to block Sora and Southern Alliance. In the end, however, all they managed to do was watch Steins;Gate break the anime ratings record of the past ten years under that very pressure.
That fact mattered even more than the rating itself.
Southern Alliance TV understood very well that, if Steins;Gate could still achieve such results under those circumstances, the entire television industry's perception would begin to change. The belief that the four giants were invincible within the sector would suffer a deep crack.
For countless Japanese commercial companies, confidence in the four major networks would also begin to waver.
And naturally, that would be extremely favorable to Southern Alliance's development from this point onward.
That night, Sora was invited to dinner with several Southern Alliance TV shareholders and the network president. They also used the occasion to hold a shareholders' meeting.
The atmosphere was completely different from when Sora had first joined the group. Back then, many investors had still treated him with a faint, concealed disdain, as a young man who was undeniably talented but still too immature to be taken fully seriously.
This time, everyone was courteous. The smiles on their faces hardly disappeared throughout the dinner.
Although Sora was not one of the largest shareholders, everyone's attitude toward him was even warmer than the one they showed the president himself, who held the biggest stake.
The reason was simple. The president might not necessarily make them that much money.
Sora could.
Thanks to the continued performance of his works, the company's stock price had climbed to a peak. The network's advertising revenue had also reached a new record, and the dividends were far from small.
Naturally, those people treated the young man who had brought all of that to them extremely well. During dinner, Sora also took the opportunity to discuss several possibilities for business cooperation.
Most members of Southern Alliance TV's shareholders' board came from investment circles connected to Japan's entertainment industry. There were chairmen of parent companies involved in music, film, television dramas, variety shows, and other fields, as well as figures with official ties to public structures supporting culture and media.
Sora disliked social events. Even so, he knew that building relationships with these people could greatly help expand the influence of his works, both inside Japan and overseas.
Naturally, during the dinner, the president also discreetly asked whether Sora had any major moves planned for the next season.
The second season of the television drama Liar Game would conclude that very week.
If Sora could not continue providing strong works as support, Southern Alliance TV's performance in the drama sector next season would become dangerously unstable.
Everyone understood this. The network had reached the top in both anime and drama this season because of Sora, not because its internal production department had suddenly become extraordinarily capable.
But faced with those hints, Sora refused directly.
Anime was his main field. Television dramas and similar projects were things he could occasionally help with, but there was no possibility of him truly becoming Southern Alliance's exclusive screenwriter.
Unless, of course, the network was willing to put an extremely high price on the table.
So Sora also responded politely, returning his own intentions through equally subtle suggestions.
That night, slightly drunk, he was escorted by two network employees back to the residential district where his mansion was located.
The enormous three-story house was empty. Located in an upscale area of Tokushima, it occupied a five-hundred-square-meter plot, with more than one thousand square meters of total floor space. And yet, he was the only one living there.
Although he continued working hard to earn money, the truth was that Sora had never had particularly high material demands. He had bought that mansion only because leaving so much money untouched felt like an even greater waste.
"What a waste… Every few days I still have to call a cleaning company just to deal with this place. Pure money down the drain."
As he muttered complaints to himself, he entered the office on the first floor.
Stored there were many of his original anime storyboards, scripts, and important creative documents.
Sora sat at his desk. Within moments, his consciousness sank into the system space.
In two days, the twenty-fifth episode of Steins;Gate would air.
But that episode was more of a slice-of-life story after the crisis had been resolved. It was meant to give the audience a little sweetness and offer some explanation about the protagonists' future lives.
In practical terms, the main plot had already ended with the broadcast of episode twenty-four.
Now, inside the company, aside from the more than two hundred people working at full strength on the production of AD's second season, there were around three hundred employees who would soon fall into a dangerous state of idleness.
Sora had indeed wanted to wait until the second season of AD premiered, and until Steins;Gate and the second season of Liar Game aired overseas, so that he could accumulate more emotional value before exchanging it all at once for high-value works.
But reality was never that ideal.
He shook his head and turned his attention back to the system space.
First, he looked at his total accumulated emotional value.
4.3 billion.
That was the return the three works had brought him over the past half year.
As for how to use that emotional value, Sora had already formed a plan long ago.
His gaze turned toward the list of works marked as animation that could be exchanged directly.
Naturally, the very long-running series had absurdly high prices. Still, in the system, exchanges could be made by season or by arc. A work like One Piece, for example, was divided into the East Blue arc, the Skypiea arc, and so on. Something like Dragon Ball was separated into the Earth arc, the Namek arc, and others.
Otherwise, if he had to exchange for an entire work all at once, how could Sora possibly accumulate enough emotional value to pay for it?
With the emotional value he currently possessed, exchanging for a specific arc from one of those major works was possible.
For the time being, however, he did not intend to consider those extremely long series.
The reason was simple. The commercial value of those works was extraordinarily high, but in order for that value to truly manifest, they would require massive capital operations, as well as a mature IP management team.
If Pokémon had not had Nintendo behind it and had instead belonged to some small game developer, it might still have become popular, but it would have been very difficult for it to grow into a global phenomenon.
If Marvel had not revived through the Iron Man film and attracted a huge influx of capital, how could the Marvel Universe have existed afterward?
Without money, without capital, without an IP management team, even while holding the rights to countless superheroes, Marvel had spent years hovering on the edge of bankruptcy.
At the moment, Sora still did not have such a powerful team under his command. But he also had no intention of cooperating with already mature Japanese companies and sharing copyright profits with them.
Fortunately, Yume Animation now had a decent financial reserve and had already begun forming departments and teams related to this kind of operation. In the future, when he exchanged for those ultra-long works by arc and successfully managed their IPs, the day when he could earn huge amounts of money and simply lie back on the profits probably would not be too far away.
But that day was not now.
So he took a step back and turned his gaze toward another work.
His expression grew serious.
Several large characters appeared before his eyes.
Attack on Titan.
Of course, only the first season.
The price of the complete work was far too high. He simply could not afford it.
Although the company's account currently had a cash flow of six to seven hundred million yen, once most of the future profits from AD and Steins;Gate arrived over the next few months, that number would certainly surpass one billion.
But if Yume Animation wanted to develop in the future into a major IP company focused on otaku culture, that amount of money, once invested in global marketing, could not really be considered such a massive sum.
The reason he chose Attack on Titan was also clear. Its commercial value was considerable, and before certain later controversies in the story, its reputation was fully worthy of being called divine. More than that, in his previous life, it had not been an anime popular in only one country. It had been a global phenomenon.
If it could replicate in this world the performance it had achieved in his previous life, then at least in terms of earning emotional value, Sora would no longer have to worry so much.
2.9 billion.
When he saw the enormous emotional value cost required to exchange only for the first season of Attack on Titan, Sora let out a sigh.
It was far more expensive than the second season of AD, the season that had elevated the work to godhood.
But something expensive had its reasons for being expensive.
Without hesitation, Sora completed the exchange.
After an intense glow swept through the space before him, his remaining emotional value dropped to 1.4 billion.
The company had too many people at the moment. To produce only one anime like Attack on Titan, there was no need to mobilize so many employees. He had to arrange another work.
So, with the emotional value he had left, perhaps it was worth trying his luck.
Turning a bicycle into a motorcycle, as they said.
Even if the draw turned out to be a disaster, he still had Attack on Titan and the second season of AD as a foundation. As for the emotional value nearly drained dry, it would fill back up in a few months.
But when he thought of draws, Sora suddenly remembered the terror he had felt in his previous life, when he was dominated by gacha systems in games from major companies.
After thinking for a moment, he began anyway. First, he made small draws, spending one million emotional value per attempt.
In this way, he drew eleven times in a row and obtained works such as Train Heroes, Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: Battle of Kimluck, Japan Sinks, Infinite Dendrogram, and Samurai Flamenco.
In the end, after three consecutive draws in which the exchange value of the works obtained was lower than the one million emotional value spent, Sora gritted his teeth and decided to throw all his remaining emotional value, 1.3 billion, into a single draw.
After all, a streak of bad luck had already been stacked.
It was like playing Tryndamere: if you attacked minions three times without landing a critical hit, then spun forward onto the enemy champion and the fourth strike still failed to crit, then dying was dying. With luck that bad, losing would not be anyone's fault.
The light flashed.
Sora's heart tightened.