In the height of summer, the sun burned over Tokushima like fire.
During that cour, the four major TV stations made no particular moves against Sora or Shikoku Alliance TV, leaving the entire industry wrapped in an unusual calm.
In the drama sector, Aobane TV's production led the national ratings for the season. In animation, meanwhile, AD, supported by Sora's popularity and the momentum left by its first season, continued to hold steady at around 5.3%.
Just when many anime fans assumed the series would keep following its school-life youth romance until the end of the second season, episode nine delivered a turn no one had expected.
The entire first season of AD had told the story of how Nagisa Furukawa and Takasaki met, grew closer, and eventually fell in love. The beginning of the second season had also mostly portrayed the couple's everyday romance during the final semester of their third year of high school, while resolving the ordinary troubles of the friends around them.
But episode nine gave Japanese anime fans a completely different feeling.
In that episode, Nagisa Furukawa fell ill.
By that point, viewers had already understood that AD was not a purely realistic story. There was a faint thread of fantasy woven through it, subtle but unmistakable. In the first season, there had been Fuko's ghost-like existence. In the second, there was the cat that took the form of a boy. And above all, there was Nagisa's illness, which had returned every spring for two consecutive years.
The first season had already mentioned that, because of an illness she suffered as a child, Nagisa's life was deeply connected to that town.
And as the town became more polluted, as construction sites multiplied and buildings rose one after another, Nagisa's body also grew weaker and weaker.
Eventually, she could no longer attend school normally.
Because her absences became too severe, she failed to earn enough credits to graduate.
On the day of the graduation ceremony, though she was seriously ill and confined to bed, Nagisa still forced herself to get dressed and go to school. She wanted to see, with her own eyes, the boy she loved graduating from his final year. And standing before him, she smiled gently and offered him her blessing.
"I wanted to see you in your school uniform one last time. And… congratulations on graduating."
Nagisa was heartbroken that she had fallen ill two years in a row and failed to graduate from high school. Even so, she was sincerely happy that Takasaki had managed to move forward.
"Nagisa… I graduated. I can't be a student at that school anymore."
Takasaki, who had once lost his way after his drunken father broke his arm and left him with a permanent injury that ended his future in basketball, looked at Nagisa with quiet seriousness.
"I hated school. But if it meant being with you, I would have stayed there forever. That last year we spent together… I was really happy. Truly happy."
At the end of the episode, unable to leave Nagisa behind alone while she repeated the year, Takasaki suggested that he wanted to stay back as well and spend another year by her side.
"Takasaki, you can't stop because of something like this. If you can keep walking forward, then you have to keep going. You go ahead first. I'll work hard for another year. And then… Takasaki… will you hold my hand?"
The final scene came with a tender, painfully moving soundtrack. On the slope leading to the school, beneath falling cherry blossoms, there were only a girl and a boy who had eyes for no one but each other.
Romance anime often involved high school.
But for many Japanese fans, this was the first time they had seen a romance anime portray graduation with such emotional weight.
Viewers who were still in middle school or high school could not fully grasp it yet. To them, the scene was simply beautiful, a little sad, a little touching.
But those who had graduated many years earlier, those who had spent long years struggling in society, were easily pulled into the emotion of that episode. Before they knew it, they were remembering the day they themselves had said goodbye to high school.
It had been a bright day like that too.
There had been friends who shared the same dreams.
There had been that person they liked.
And after that day ended, they never saw them again.
The greatest strength of AD lay precisely there. The work was not merely moving; its characters and their pain made it almost cruelly easy for the audience to see themselves reflected in them.
After that episode aired, AD's ratings surpassed 5.4% for the first time, and the series' score rose to 9.3.
From episode nine onward, the direction of the story changed completely.
After graduating, Takasaki did not continue on to university. Instead, he stepped directly into society and began working as an intern in line maintenance at an electric company.
He climbed utility poles, worked at dangerous heights under the blazing sun, carried heavy loads that left bloody marks on his shoulders, and gradually built closer relationships with his coworkers. The boy who, one year earlier, had no goal in life and could not find any meaning in living began to mature rapidly because of one girl, shouldering the responsibilities he had to bear as a man.
Without fanfare, AD quietly shifted its central theme from love to family and responsibility.
And that change was met with nearly unanimous praise from Japanese fans and media alike.
There were countless romance anime in the world.
But an anime capable of portraying the cruelty and beauty of real life existing side by side…
At that moment, only AD could do it.
By mid-September, episode twelve began to portray Takasaki's father.
Within the work's setting, after the death of Takasaki's mother, his father had spent his days working and his nights drinking. There had never been any normal communication between father and son. Worse still, he had been the one who, while drunk, injured Takasaki's arm and left him with a permanent condition that could never fully heal.
In episode twelve, he went even further.
He became involved in an illegal case.
The first time Takasaki brought his girlfriend, Nagisa Furukawa, to meet his father was inside a detention center.
And it was precisely in that episode, when Takasaki most needed someone to lean on, that Nagisa said she was willing to stay with him for the rest of her life. She said she wanted to marry him.
The story became more and more realistic.
And also heavier and heavier.
Even so, the popularity of the anime only continued to rise.
At the beginning of the first season, many AD fans had once felt that characters like Tomoyo and Fuko were more charming than the heroine, Nagisa Furukawa.
But by the second season, once everyone began seeing the story from Takasaki's perspective, they finally understood just how healing that gentle girl truly was.
"I cried watching this. Nagisa Furukawa is eternal."
"Gentleness isn't something you say with your mouth. It's something you show through your actions. That scene where she hugged Takasaki when he was at the most desperate point in his life… to me, that is the pinnacle of pure love."
"Takasaki is just too unlucky. Having a father like that is a tragedy. The guy was a basketball athlete, and then his dad gets drunk, breaks his arm, and leaves him unable to raise it above his shoulder. How was he supposed to keep playing basketball? How was he supposed to continue as a special athlete student? At the start of season one, I thought the protagonist was kind of useless for giving up in high school. After this episode, I realized that if I were him, I would have given up too."
"How did Takasaki's dad even get involved in a crime? A five-year sentence? Great. He ruined three generations."
"The anime didn't spell it out, but you can feel it. I feel so bad for the protagonist."
"He brings his future wife to meet his father for the first time, and it happens in a detention center. Suffocating."
"What moved me most was still Nagisa. At a time like that, she didn't hesitate for even a second before agreeing to marry Takasaki. I can't even imagine what would have happened to his mind if she had refused."
"I used to think this anime didn't have any highlights. I never expected Kantoku Sora to take such a realistic route in the second half of season two."
"Honestly, from episode nine to episode twelve, I, a man whose wife passed away three years ago, cried every single episode. It's too real. When I had no money, she stayed with me. When I finally made money, she was already gone. Sigh…"
"These past few weeks of episodes reminded me of my own struggles after graduating from university. A shady company delayed my wages, I couldn't pay rent, and I couldn't even afford food. I'm also grateful to my girlfriend for supporting and comforting me like Nagisa when I was at the lowest point of my life."
"I'm a middle schooler, and even I found these episodes really moving. I hope my future girlfriend is as gentle as Nagisa."
"If I had a girlfriend like Nagisa, I'd work myself to the bone every day too, just to give her a good life."
"The best way to change a man is to make him fall in love with a girl. Kantoku Sora may be young, but he clearly understands that."
"So, brothers, I've been saving episodes for five weeks. Is the story good now? Can I finally start watching?"
The direction of public opinion around the second season of AD followed almost exactly what Sora had predicted from the beginning.
After Takasaki left school and stepped into society, the praise and attention surrounding the anime only grew stronger.
Inside Yume Animation, Sora, who was supervising the production of three anime at the same time, was so busy he barely had time to breathe. Even so, he regularly set aside time to appear on variety shows and attend fan events, promoting AD whenever possible.
Looking at the latest ratings report for the newest episode, which showed 5.42%, Sora set the document down on his desk.
For the story to have reached only this point and already broken past 5.4% in ratings was, to him, a pleasant surprise.
Now, all the early groundwork for AD had been completed. The light orbs necessary to achieve the perfect ending had also all been gathered.
From this point onward, Japanese viewers would finally experience the most brilliant arc of the entire work.
As Sora was thinking about those things, someone approached.
"Kantoku, here are the storyboards for cuts 212 to 226 of Your Name."
"Come pick them up again after I finish reviewing them in two hours."
"Kantoku, the Attack on Titan production team has made a request. They hope the company can allow the temporary hiring of a few veteran key animators from the industry to join the team. There are too many shots of galloping horses in this anime, and the in-house key animators may have difficulty completing all the related work on schedule. However, this proposal may increase the budget somewhat."
"No problem. I'll handle that at tomorrow's meeting."
"Kantoku, we found the meteor crater terrain you asked us to search for. Should we begin planning the trip there for Your Name's location scouting?"
"If nothing unexpected happens, schedule it for next week."
"Kantoku, regarding Noriko Animation…"
After only a few minutes of free time, Sora was once again completely surrounded by the work arrangements brought in by the production managers of the company's various project teams.
And Sumire, who shared the same office with him, was no exception. She also had a large amount of work waiting to be completed.
Attack on Titan, the second season of AD, and Your Name - the two of them both served as Kantokus on all three anime. The only difference was that Sora handled the most important parts and determined the style of each work, while Sumire took charge of the secondary sections, producing them according to the stylistic requirements he set.
After so much time managing several works at once, both Sora and Sumire had grown accustomed to the rhythm.
After all, every anime produced by the company received investments in the hundreds of millions of yen. That money was not being spent carelessly.
Under them were highly reliable teams, capable of carrying out their instructions with precision and saving both of them a considerable amount of working time.