Yuto Hasegawa sank into the sofa, and in that moment, an almost unreal sense of fulfillment filled his chest.
Those little more than twenty minutes of animation had been, in the twenty years he had spent watching anime, the most healing twenty minutes he had ever experienced.
Without even realizing it, a smile spread across his face.
Heh.
Hehehe…
So that was the kind of story it had been.
A masterpiece.
Kantoku Sora, you really are a god.
Yume Animation, a god-tier studio.
The Shikoku Broadcasters' Alliance, a god-tier network.
Clannad production team, a god-tier animation team.
Yuto kept his eyes fixed on the ending sequence, unable to look away even for a second.
He knew that this ending song was the last time in his life he would ever be able to spend with this work for the first time.
Even if he bought the Blu-ray in the future or watched the reruns, he would never feel this exact emotion again.
And because of that, he felt an almost painful gratitude that he had not been swayed by the boycott the haters had tried to stir up online, that collective campaign urging viewers to drop the final episode of C as a protest against Sora.
The people who had truly failed to watch the episode live tonight were the biggest losers.
Once the internet was flooded with spoilers tomorrow, watching the rerun would no longer be the same.
The experience would inevitably lose something.
Two minutes later, the ending song came to an end. Yuto was just about to turn off the television and rush online, eager to talk with other C fans and share everything still overflowing in his chest.
But the broadcast image suddenly changed.
A gloomy scene appeared, painted in heavy lines and wrapped in a suffocating atmosphere.
On that day, humanity remembered…
Yes.
This world is cruel.
Upon a towering wall, a colossal silhouette emerged.
A gigantic crimson monster, red like exposed flesh, wreathed in scalding white steam.
Horses thundered through a forest. Steel wires shot from the waists of soldiers, and bodies swept through the air between trees and walls with movements so swift and elegant they seemed almost impossible.
Then came the humans, struggling and weeping as they were devoured by giants.
Yuto's mouth fell open. His expression went blank.
What was this?
Shingeki no Kyojin.
April 2nd next year. Sunday night, eight o'clock.
After the brief announcement appeared on the screen, the image froze for an instant.
Then, a meteor fell over Kagawa.
Above the clouds, the sky was clear and blue.
Beneath them, the moon hung bright and silent.
Fragments of the meteor scattered across the sky, leaving behind dazzling trails of light.
- I've always been searching for something.
- Taki… don't you remember?
The voices of a boy and a girl echoed.
A lovely girl, panicked, stared down at her own chest and body while sitting on a bed.
Then came the image of a boy, his face flushed red, hiding beneath a blanket with the embarrassment of a girl.
- Could it be… that we switched bodies?
"Pff!"
Yuto nearly spat out the water he had been drinking.
A boy and a girl switching bodies?
Huh?
The scenes shifted rapidly, moving from bright, lively energy to a heavier, more resolute tone. The expressions of the protagonists changed with the rhythm, as though the story that had begun so lightly was about to plunge into something far greater.
The trailer ended with the two of them in different places, clutching their heads as they cried and asked, almost desperately:
- Your name is…?
Then the screen faded to black again, leaving only a line of text.
Kimi no Na wa.
Directed by Sora.
Nationwide release on February 6th next year.
The trailers for Shingeki no Kyojin and Kimi no Na wa had been revealed together at that exact moment.
Combined, they did not even reach one minute.
Even so, everything most captivating about both works had already been conveyed.
At that instant, the viewers of the Shikoku Broadcasters' Alliance remained frozen in front of their televisions, while their minds, still submerged in C's ending only seconds earlier, exploded with excitement.
On the NatsuYume forum, the anime section broke its all-time record for online users that very night.
"Damn it, I can't even put into words how excited I am right now."
"Kantoku Sora is a god."
"Nagisa Furukawa came back to life, Ushio came back too… I love you, Kantoku Sora."
"Forgive me for being so loud last week. Hehe. I'm an idiot."
"I'm so embarrassed. Last week I made eighteen posts cursing that old bastard Sora. If you had this plot ready, why didn't you say so earlier? Why didn't you tell us?"
"But don't you think this story is way too absurd? Gathering orbs of light to revive people, and some girl in a parallel world turning out to be the protagonist's daughter? That's ridiculous."
"Ridiculous, my ass. You watch anime and still run your mouth this much? How much did the four major networks pay you? Five yen per comment? Is that all your dignity and conscience are worth?"
"Speaking of which, this foreshadowing in C was planted all the way back in the first season. All I can say is that the old bastard is too good at hiding things."
"Don't bother with those haters. All they know how to say is that a romance anime shouldn't have miracles, that wishes are laughable. But is that really what this work is about? Every part of C's story exists to tell us one thing: loss and gain, life and choice. Kantoku Sora used this story to show us that when you truly choose someone, you have to keep walking forward with conviction, no matter what happens. Don't regret it. And these people keep nitpicking whether the sci-fi logic makes sense? A pack of dogs."
"Well, they're getting paid too. They've got families to feed, right? Hehe. Let's forgive them."
"A masterpiece even more divine than Steins;Gate."
"Kantoku Sora is insane."
"I was wrong. I'm slapping myself in the face. C taught us that once we choose to love something, we should love it firmly until the end. And yet, halfway through, I doubted C and Kantoku Sora. I deserve to die."
"It was all the four major networks manipulating public opinion. Because of that damned online discourse, I almost missed tonight's final episode of C. Those cursed bastards."
"Don't even talk about it. I cried so hard I almost died. I only started watching five minutes after the episode began because my best friend called me and told me to rush to the TV, saying it looked like the story was about to turn around. I caught it right at the scene where the robot disappeared in that lonely world and the girl called the robot her father. I hate those paid commenters so much. I'll have to watch the first few minutes tomorrow morning during the rerun. Damn it."
"Same here. I only made it in time for the part where Ushio hugs Nagisa Furukawa in C. I missed everything before that. Now I'm reading analysis posts online to understand why that miracle happened."
"Can I say I'm an idiot? A friend warned me, and I only went to watch the trailers for Shingeki no Kyojin and Kimi no Na wa. I didn't see a single minute of C's actual episode. I'm crying. Now the entire internet has spoiled the plot for me. What am I supposed to do? Will watching the rerun tomorrow ruin the experience?"
"No matter what, this is our own fault. The script Kantoku Sora designed is a masterpiece. We were the ones who weren't firm enough and dropped it early, so we ended up like this. Sigh…"
"And we can't even blame Kantoku Sora for not warning us ahead of time. If he had said even one sentence about a reversal later on, the viewing experience for this episode would have dropped drastically. Watching with curiosity and watching while waiting for a twist are two completely different things."
"Masterpiece against masterpiece. Between Steins;Gate and C, which one is the best anime of the year?"
"The awards will be announced in two weeks. I'm guessing both C and Steins;Gate will definitely be nominated for the big prizes. Now the judges are the ones who'll suffer."
"So is nobody going to talk about the trailers for Shingeki no Kyojin and Kimi no Na wa? I thought both were insanely attractive, and they were only trailers."
"Relax. Tonight belongs to C. Tomorrow and the day after, the topics of Kimi no Na wa and Shingeki no Kyojin will definitely explode."
"February 6th and April 2nd, right? Say no more. Just because of the emotion C gave me, I'll absolutely support them with everything I've got when the time comes."
The final episode of C brought its journey to a perfect close that night.
And the anime had also created a true miracle.
When episode twenty aired, its score had been 9.6.
After episode twenty-one, it fell to 8.3.
After episode twenty-two, it rose to 9.8.
It was difficult to imagine what the audience had gone through in those three short weeks.
What kind of emotional whiplash did it take to create a miracle like that?
But that night, discussions about C filled every major otaku forum on the internet.
A flood of content creators began uploading plot analysis videos, explaining the cleverness behind the orbs of light and the wishes, while also clarifying why the protagonist's decision to embrace Nagisa Furukawa in the final episode had been so important.
If he had not done so, even if all the orbs of light in his possession had activated their power, the resulting world might very well have become a timeline where he had never met Nagisa Furukawa at all.
And not the timeline he truly wished for, where both Nagisa Furukawa and Ushio were still alive.
Re:Zero, Steins;Gate, and now C.
Three consecutive works, all involving changes to the past, the future, and world lines.
In truth, Kimi no Na wa, which would premiere in February, also contained similar elements.
It could be said that several of the works presented by Sora were threaded through with this kind of structure.
Many viewers had already begun to notice this. Even a number of Japanese screenwriters had started paying attention to the element, slowly beginning to imitate it.
Japan's local creators were not completely rigid or incapable of learning. They absorbed things, studied them, and tried to catch up as well. The problem was that reaching that level required time.
After all, even in Sora's previous world, the Chinese animation industry had spent decades learning, and even with so much funding behind it, it was still in the process of catching up. Perhaps, one day, Japan's local creative strength would also manage to reach that height.
At noon, the ratings for Clannad final episode were announced.
6.38%.
If not for the public opinion shockwave of the previous week, the figure might have been even higher.
Fortunately, during the first two minutes of the final episode's broadcast, a group of fans who sensed that something was different about the plot began frantically spreading the news online and in real life that C's final episode had a reversal.
So, in the first few minutes of the broadcast, a large number of television viewers who had intended to abandon the series gave in to their hearts and turned on the TV.
Not only did the ratings not fall, they rose sharply instead.
The network even announced the ratings for the final episode's rerun, which aired at seven in the morning.
Even at seven in the morning, the rerun reached 6.07%.
One could easily imagine how many C fans had woken up early just to watch the anime.
Some were watching it for the second time.
Others were seeing it for the first.
With the broadcast of Clannad second season now concluded, the release of official merchandise related to the season was also announced.
And after that…
Only two weeks remained until the awards ceremony of the Tokyo Animation Festival.