When Dango Daikazoku played during ordinary scenes, it sounded almost like a children's song, soft and simple, carrying a kind of innocent warmth.
But at that exact moment, when the melody played over Nagisa Furukawa's death after giving birth to Ushio, everything changed.
In an instant, every scene the anime had spent dozens of episodes building around Nagisa rose back into the minds of the fans. Her meeting with Takasaki on that slope. The hesitant beginning of their bond. The love that slowly took shape, their graduation, their marriage, the fragile everyday life they had struggled so hard to protect. All of it condensed into one unbearable emotion and, in the end, turned into tears that could no longer be held back.
Meeting her on that slope…
Had it been a mistake?
Inside the anime, Takasaki's heart was filled with nothing but endless pain.
If Nagisa Furukawa had never met him, would she have avoided such a cruel fate?
The anime used a silent metaphor to reveal his state of mind.
Just like the scene from the first season, when the male and female leads first met.
The girl still stood at the foot of the slope, hesitating, afraid of the school year she had been forced to repeat.
But this time, Takasaki did not call out to her.
He did not speak to her.
After pausing for only a moment, he simply walked past her.
If meeting him meant that she would eventually die, weakened by childbirth and the illness that had consumed her body, then he would rather have never met Nagisa Furukawa at all. He would rather she had lived safely, even if it meant erasing everything they had shared.
If only we had never met.
Perhaps that would have been better.
Episode sixteen of NA ended there, abruptly, without giving the audience even the smallest trace of comfort.
And the blow it dealt to Sora's fans across Japan was enormous.
Up to this point, Sora had produced many anime works in the Japanese industry.
But this episode was, without question, the most painful one.
Natsume Yuujinchou was healing. Re:Zero and Steins;Gate had oppressive, suffocating plots, but fans knew the protagonists had a chance to start over and rewrite tragedy. Those stories hurt, but they did not leave people in despair.
This episode of C, however, gave everyone only one feeling.
Despair.
In a romance anime, what right did the writer have to make the heroine die like that?
In literature class, teachers often said that sorrow could be written through joyful scenery, and that happiness could be used to make grief feel even sharper.
Episode sixteen of C pushed that idea to its absolute limit.
With the faintly bright melody of Dango Daikazoku playing in the background, with Nagisa Furukawa smiling on the screen, and with the birth of the adorable new life called Ushio, Nagisa reached the end of her own life.
The impact of that episode made countless anime fans who proudly called themselves warriors of pure love break down in tears.
"Old thief Sora, if you're still human, I'll eat three piles of crap right now."
"I'm a forty-year-old man and I cried like a child watching anime. I can't take this kind of plot."
"There was no need for this. Why arrange something like this? Why?"
"Killing the heroine in a romance anime… seriously, my brain stopped working."
"They kept bringing up Nagisa's illness before, but I thought it was just to build suspense and tension. I thought old thief Sora would never actually let her die. Now I'm completely stunned. Damn that man. Is his heart made of iron?"
"I still can't accept this plot. I followed this anime for more than half a year. How can the heroine just die like that? It was too sudden."
"I'm dropping it. I'm done."
"What are you people talking about? I've only been saving episodes for two months. How did I come online and immediately see everyone saying Nagisa died? What kind of joke is this?"
"Brother, I'm not lying. Watch the rebroadcast tomorrow morning at eight. This episode of C raised suffering to a whole new ceiling. Old thief Sora has stopped being human."
"Is it possible that Nagisa didn't actually die? Maybe she comes back next episode. You know how some patients in hospitals only seem dead, right? Maybe she wakes up next week."
"That might be possible. I'll watch one more episode next week before deciding."
"If Nagisa is really dead, then this anime has completely collapsed."
"Could it be that the first anime to fall apart at the ending in Kantoku Sora's career will actually be C?"
"Even Sora can make a bad ending?"
"Even if the plot is going downhill, this kind of arrangement is too crude. Even if you let an elementary school student write the script, they wouldn't come up with a romance anime where the heroine dies from childbirth combined with some vague illness. I find it hard to believe Kantoku Sora was in his right mind when he wrote this."
"After all, he's only an eighteen-year-old young man."
"Something feels wrong. I don't believe someone with Kantoku Sora's ability would make such a basic mistake. There are still six episodes left in the second season. I keep feeling like Kantoku Sora is planning something huge for the finale."
"Hahaha, Sora's brainless fans are still dreaming. Is it that hard to admit this is the limit of his creative ability? A romance anime kills the heroine, and you people still want to defend it?"
"Before this, Sora's fans kept saying he was invincible. Well, look at him now. People really shouldn't be praised too much. I believe he has talent, but creating this kind of plot proves he got arrogant. He probably thought he was opening a new path for romance stories, lost in his own dream. In reality, he just produced a massive pile of garbage."
"Young people are still young people in the end. If it had been a seasoned screenwriter, or an anime Kantoku with real life experience, there's no way this kind of script or storyboard would have passed a production meeting and been turned into an episode."
"Heh. I'll sit here and watch the so-called mythical genius of the anime industry, who rose less than two years ago, fall tonight."
"Damn, these haters still aren't dead? They were quiet for a few months, and now they're crawling out again tonight. Don't forget what happened during the middle and later parts of Re:Zero and Steins;Gate, when a bunch of haters laughed at Kantoku Sora and ended up getting slapped in the face over and over."
For the entire night, anime forums across Japan were flooded with discussions about the death of the heroine in episode sixteen of C.
It was not that viewers could not accept death in anime. But at the very least, a character's death had to carry meaning.
In a battle anime, a character's sacrifice might serve, like Kakyoin's in JoJo, to reveal Dio's ability. It might be like Jiraiya's death in Naruto, passing on crucial information. Or it might be like the commander's death in Attack on Titan, carving open a path of survival for his comrades.
No matter the world, anime fans would rarely question deaths like those.
But Nagisa Furukawa's death in C was different.
From the current perspective of the fans, they could not see why the plot needed it.
Why did someone have to die in a romance anime?
And it was not just anyone. It was Nagisa Furukawa, the heroine who had been built up since the very first episode, for more than half a year.
It was simply too difficult to understand.
At noon the next day, the ratings for episode sixteen of Clannad second season were released.
A rating of 5.68% still placed the episode among the highest points of the series.
But after an entire night of fan backlash, the Japanese media also began to voice its doubts.
Of course, the reason these media outlets started publishing such critical opinions was inseparable from the maneuvering of the four major television networks behind the scenes.
"The genius Kantoku makes a grave mistake out of arrogance: episode sixteen of C's second season sparks massive controversy."
"A plot even an elementary school student couldn't write: C episode sixteen kills the heroine, and Sora faces a serious reputation crisis."
"Famous anime screenwriter sharply criticizes episode sixteen of Clannad second season, bluntly stating that Sora does not respect the audience or the market."
"C may face mass abandonment from fans, with ratings expected to fall sharply."
"Even geniuses have expiration dates. Was Sora's really this short?"
For several days in a row, Nagisa Furukawa's death in C became a topic that even people who did not watch the anime had heard about to some extent.
Under the deliberate push of the four major networks, attention around C did not decrease. Instead, it became far greater than before.
Failure was not unusual. What anime Kantoku had gone through an entire career without experiencing a flop?
In Sora's previous life, even Hayao Miyazaki had once declared that he would wash his hands of the industry and retire in his forties after the box office failure of Laputa: Castle in the Sky. But no one would truly take that kind of thing seriously.
If one work failed, the next one just had to win the field back.
Even if C failed in Japan, that would be all there was to it.
But the four major networks spared no effort in stirring up the media and well-known anime industry figures, dragging these topics into the spotlight every single day.
Their purpose was simple. They wanted to forcibly shape the image of Sora as a Kantoku who had exhausted his talent, a stubborn creator who did not respect the audience or his fans.
And because of that influence, even Shikoku Alliance TV was dragged into criticism from all sides of the industry.
The people in the station's production department were furious.
As insiders, they naturally knew how extraordinary the later plot of C would be.
But at the moment, they could not explain too much. Otherwise, it would easily involve spoilers. All they could do was swallow their anger in silence.
Still, it was impossible not to feel shaken. After all, whether the later plot of C could truly reverse its reputation still had to be tested by the market. Saying there was a high chance the audience would praise the later episodes also meant admitting that there was still a small chance everything could go wrong.
If it really did collapse, then Sora, the station's greatest trump card, might truly gain the first stain of his anime career.
A similar mood was also spreading through all of Yume Animation.
Everyone acknowledged the quality of C's later episodes.
But everyone also knew that, with the four major networks fanning the flames, the current storm surrounding C was far from small.
They were not like Sora, who had the broadcast data from the work's previous life to support his confidence.
All the employees' predictions about C's future results were, in essence, just guesses.
No one truly had certainty.
"You're surprisingly calm. You can still eat two portions of lunch?"
In the office, Sora looked at the negative comments the haters were posting about him online while eating his lunch with great appetite. Beside him, Yumi wore an expression of speechless disbelief.
"People may be made of iron, but rice is what keeps them standing," Sora said cheerfully. "Besides, the four major networks stayed quiet for months. Now that they've finally made a move, they're helping me. Of course I'm happy. I should eat a little more."
"Helping you?" Yumi asked in confusion.
"Being hated is still being talked about. What I fear isn't the industry criticizing C. What I fear is the industry not caring about the anime at all," Sora said with a relaxed laugh. "As long as people are still paying attention to C, even if they're criticizing the plot online, all of that attention will eventually become traffic when the anime airs. And traffic can be converted into ratings."
"You really are confident."
"Of course."
Sora smiled.
"You've already watched the finished episodes that come after this, haven't you? Do you still not have confidence in C?"
"I…"
Yumi paused for a moment, then sighed.
"It's not that I don't have confidence. I'm just afraid Japanese anime fans won't recognize its value. A work I like may not necessarily be a work the market likes. But you… you always have so much confidence in your own works. I don't even know where that confidence comes from. Aren't you worried at all that something you create might go against the market's taste?"
She looked at him seriously.
"This anime killed its heroine. Even if you portray the heroine's daughter extremely well, there may still be fans who refuse to accept it."
"Hmm. I suppose my thinking will change once I flop at least once," Sora said.
Before he experienced a real failure, he would naturally continue using the data from those works in his previous life as an important reference and would build his production plans around them.
Sora had never completely denied the possibility that a work might fail to adapt to a different environment. But since that had never happened so far, he simply classified it as a low-probability event.
A few days passed.
Soon, another Sunday arrived.