In mid-January, production on the animated feature film Your Name was officially completed.
More than three hundred people had spent the better part of half a year working tirelessly on the project. In order to meet the announced release date, a significant portion of the finishing work had even been outsourced to some of the top animation studios in Japan, which stepped in as support during the final stages of production.
In other words, the quality the film had reached now was the absolute limit of what could be achieved within that schedule.
Inside Yume Animation's screening room, the company's executives and core staff gathered to watch the fully edited final cut of Your Name from beginning to end.
When the credits rolled, applause burst through the room.
"It's over…"
"This film is definitely going to sell big during the winter season."
"I suddenly feel like crying."
"It doesn't matter who the competitors are. Your Name won't lose."
"The regret left behind by 5 Centimeters per Second has finally been made whole in this film. After the train passed in 5 Centimeters per Second, what remained was the final separation of the male and female leads. But after the train passes in Your Name… what begins is something new."
"Supervisor Sora is really single? Why are his romance works always this interesting? His style is completely different from those stiff romantic scripts we usually see in the Japanese industry."
"Maybe this is exactly the kind of love a genius like Supervisor Sora imagines. That's why it gives people that heart-racing feeling."
The casual chatter of the staff made Sora's eyebrow twitch again and again.
He knew exactly what they were thinking, but still - if they were going to discuss their own boss inside the company, could they at least pretend to be a little discreet?
He had a good temper. That did not mean he had no temper at all.
"Enough. Quiet."
A cold, stern voice rang out beside him.
Sumire swept an impassive gaze across everyone present, and in an instant, the entire room fell silent.
Sora was tolerant. Sumire, on the other hand, was not.
Yume Animation's management had always functioned that way: Sora played the softer role, while Sumire took on the harsher one, the person who drew boundaries without needing to raise her voice.
That was why many people in the company feared her more than they feared him.
"All right. There are no problems with the final edit," Sora said quietly. "Distribute this version and begin preparing the exhibition copies."
The moment he said that, everyone in the room seemed to release the breath they had been holding.
If there were no problems, then everything was fine.
That night, every member of the production team gathered to celebrate.
After more than half a year of relentless work, everyone involved was exhausted to the bone, both physically and mentally. So Sora decided to grant them all an early holiday starting the next day. As for their next assignments, those would only be decided after the eighth working day following the New Year break.
When the members of the Giant production team next door heard the news, they could barely hide their envy.
And so, in an atmosphere slightly lighter than usual, the middle of January slipped by.
By the time late January arrived, the mood of Japan's film industry had changed completely.
The moment one opened NatsuYume, promotional videos for winter-season films could be seen constantly appearing near the top of the trending rankings.
Advertisements for films such as Wooden Man, Crazy Horse Race 2, Darkness Before Dawn, The Forest of Animals, and others appeared one after another, leaving almost no empty space.
On the variety shows of the four major broadcasters, the casts and crews of these films took turns appearing for interviews, games, special segments, and promotional features.
Naturally, Your Name did not fall behind in that regard either.
Sora and Noriko Animation had jointly invested nearly two hundred million yen into the promotional campaign for the animated feature.
Even within the Japanese film industry, that was an extremely aggressive amount.
The production cost of Your Name had been one hundred and forty million yen. Its promotion alone had started at two hundred million. Just to break even through the box office, the film would need to surpass one billion yen.
To be honest, although 5 Centimeters per Second had earned one billion three hundred million yen at the box office the previous year, no one could say for certain whether Sora's second animated feature would be able to repeat that kind of success.
In the eyes of many people in the industry, this investment carried a strong element of gambling.
But after seeing Sora pour so much money into promotion, the entire film industry basically understood his determination.
This young man, regarded as the greatest talent in Japanese animation, was not entering the winter season merely to show his face, collect some box office revenue, and walk away with a modest profit.
With that much money invested in marketing and distribution, at the very least, he was aiming to secure a place in the top three and fight for second. Perhaps he was even aiming higher.
And once the promotion for every film became concentrated in the same period, the fans of each production naturally began clashing with one another.
With paid marketing accounts from all sides adding fuel to the flames and shamelessly steering public opinion, fans of Sora's animation works soon began fighting directly with fans of other films' Kantokus and actors.
"There are still people hyping up Chū Mō's movies? Did everyone forget the nightmare that was Dark Firefly two years ago? I've never watched such a hilarious horror movie in a theater before. That ending was absolute trash. This so-called Wooden Man is probably going to sink just the same."
"Don't even start. Ryū Yanagi's brain-dead fans are even funnier. That woman has been box-office poison for years. Just because she got lucky five years ago and won a Best Actress award, now her fans think they can attack Kantoku Chū Mō? Anyone who didn't know better would think Crazy Horse Race 2 had already locked in first place for the season."
"Speaking of first place, did you hear? The Kantoku - no, the animation supervisor - of Your Name, Sora, said during a press event in Tokyo, right in front of the reporters, that Your Name's goal is to become number one for the winter season. I laughed so hard watching that interview. An animated film trying to take first place? Hahaha, that's hilarious."
"That Sora guy has been getting on my nerves for a long time. Over the past two years, he basically shows up in the trending topics every few weeks. My eyes are tired of seeing that name. Those Japanese otaku are embarrassing. Instead of admiring real actresses, they go crazy over paper characters. A guy in his early twenties making these stupid animations and earning more than a billion yen a year… If those people have money to support cartoons, they'd be better off donating it to poor people starving overseas."
"Classic. The internet has been around for so many years, and the idiots are still the same. Every time this topic comes up, someone says, 'If so-and-so has money, why don't they donate it to the poor?' Usually, people who say things like that wouldn't even give a single yen to a homeless person on the street in real life."
"Hey, you idiots can fight among yourselves all you want, but why are you dragging Supervisor Sora out to be stomped on for no reason? Do you really think he has no fans in the film section?"
"Don't bother with these people. Most of them are probably paid accounts trying to steer the conversation. It's like this every year before the winter season. Marketing armies come out from every direction to smear the competition. If they're attacking Supervisor Sora, that only means the promotion and influence of Your Name have already made certain investors feel threatened. If the film weren't a threat, no one would waste time slandering it."
"What does any of this have to do with paid accounts? Just because you like Sora, does everyone else have to like him too? I hate his works. That Natsume Yuujinchou everyone keeps praising like some masterpiece - I couldn't even get through one episode. Complete garbage."
"An anime with almost fifty episodes, and you watched one glance before calling it garbage? And you still want to pretend you're not a paid hater?"
"Haha. Last year, 5 Centimeters per Second got lucky by releasing in a good window and somehow scraped together one billion three hundred million yen at the box office. Now this Sora has gotten so inflated he's completely lost his sense of reality, even daring to talk about taking first place for the season. I'm just waiting for this movie to premiere and flop beautifully."
"Japan has so many idiots who like these childish animations that someone like Sora actually became famous and made that much money."
"Got it. So you're all just jealous of Supervisor Sora, right? The guy is young and already earns hundreds of millions a year. Since you can't compete, all you can do is attack him personally and smear Your Name for a little satisfaction."
From January twentieth onward, the film section of NatsuYume became a battlefield of smoke and noise.
The investors behind every film with ambitions for the season were desperately pouring money into promotion, praising their own works while trying to damage the image of their competitors.
Among them, Your Name, Wooden Man, and Crazy Horse Race 2 were the three names that appeared most frequently in the film section.
As for the other five films scheduled to premiere during the same period, because their promotional budgets were nowhere near the two or three hundred million yen invested by those three major productions, almost no one appeared to express confidence in them. Even negative comments about them were rare.
Under this intense public-opinion environment, Japanese film fans were gradually influenced without realizing it. Before they had even watched anything, an initial impression of the three films had already taken shape in their minds.
Wooden Man was the new film by Chū Mō, a renowned Kantoku.
Crazy Horse Race 2 was the sequel to a classic comedy, gathering a cast full of famous stars.
And Your Name was another animated feature from animation prodigy Sora, following 5 Centimeters per Second. The media's focus on this point was simple and direct: since entering the industry, Sora had never lost.
Although he still could not be considered an absolute force within traditional cinema, his current reputation in animation, the money he had invested into Your Name's campaign, and the previous performance of 5 Centimeters per Second were more than enough to support his presence.
At least in terms of marketing, before that winter season's premieres began, Your Name did not fall behind any other film released in the same period.
Even when competing directly against Wooden Man and Crazy Horse Race 2, both supported by major capital, the animated feature showed no sign of disadvantage.
That was what shocked both the animation industry and the film industry in Japan the most.
Sora had started as a complete newcomer in the world of animation and reached this point in only a few years. The impression many people had of him had not yet caught up with that change.
Many had assumed that the pre-release promotion of Your Name would be extremely difficult, crushed on all sides by major capital. But the current situation forced many of his detractors to recognize reality.
It also allowed the managers of Japan's cinema chains to see the market more clearly.
What paid accounts said online was not that important.
What truly mattered was that on NatsuYume, the gathering place of otaku culture with tens of millions of daily active users, search topics related to Your Name had remained in the top ten trending rankings for an entire week.
That was the real level of attention the work had gained.
Only after the initial promotional campaign achieved that effect would Your Name have the confidence to negotiate its screening ratio with theaters.
While Sora traveled across various regions of Japan to promote the film before its release, Noriko Animation, as the distributor, was locked in a prolonged tug-of-war against the capital behind several competing films, fighting for a larger share of theater scheduling before the February sixth premiere.
Box-office subsidies, negotiations to concede part of the revenue split, even direct payments to cinemas so they would display three-dimensional promotional posters on opening day…
Every available method had basically been used.
patre0n ImmortalEmperor