On TV, a news segment is playing, featuring an interview clip with Lin Zhiyan.
Lin Zhiyan's handsome face appears, speaking about the inspiration behind the main plotline of "saving Itomori Town" in "Your Name":
"It was mainly based on the idea that came to me after the Great Earthquake in '11. At that time, my previous animation hadn't finished airing yet, but it was already completely produced, and I was conceiving a new animation project when the earthquake suddenly happened.
Earthquakes are natural disasters, impossible for humans to predict. However, animation can satisfy people's beautiful fantasies. At that time, I was thinking, if I had a way to predict an earthquake and knew the exact moment it would happen, what would I do?
Of course, this animation is mainly focused on romance, and romance requires something beautiful, while earthquakes are not beautiful at all. So, I replaced the earthquake with a meteorite that split off from a beautiful comet, and thus, the disaster in Itomori Town and the main plotline of the male and female leads saving Itomori Town came to be."
The source of inspiration for "saving Itomori Town" is different from that of "swapping lives," so naturally, Lin Zhiyan's answer was different as well.
However, having said that, only Lin Zhiyan himself knew the truth: the inspiration for the main plot of saving Itomori Town in the original version of "Your Name" from the other timeline was indeed the 2011 earthquake. This was something Makoto Shinkai himself stated during an interview with C-site. However, the words that came out of Lin Zhiyan's mouth were pure fabrication based on those facts.
Earthquakes cannot be predicted?
For others, perhaps they really are unpredictable, but for Lin Zhiyan, they were not. It's just that even if he had known the exact time of the earthquake, he wouldn't have done anything about it back then.
The reporter interviewing Lin Zhiyan certainly didn't know his true situation. Since it was a news interview and not an exclusive feature, his appearance segment ended after he finished speaking.
Of course, although the interview ended, the segment continued by mentioning the "Your Name" animation, describing how popular it was and how enthusiastic the audience was. It even interviewed a few viewers, asking them for their thoughts after watching "Your Name," and their responses were all positive, such as: "Very moving," "I loved it," "It was very good," and so on.
When this segment ended and other news began, Lin Zhiyan, in front of the television, picked up the remote control, switched to another channel, and started watching a different program.
Beside him, Nanase Mayumi remarked, "You're on TV again."
"Hmm," Lin Zhiyan nodded.
"What's the box office at now? Is there any hope of hitting 20 billion by this weekend?" Nanase Mayumi asked again.
"It was 19.3 billion this morning. It'll be a bit difficult to reach 20 billion by this weekend, but it should be possible by the weekend after next," Lin Zhiyan replied.
"It was released on May 1st, so it's only been about two and a half months, and the box office is already nearing 20 billion..." Nanase Mayumi did a quick mental calculation and then mused happily, "Do you think it's possible for another 10 billion or so in box office revenue to come in later, so that by the time it finishes its run, it just happens to surpass Spirited Away and become the number one animated film at the Japanese box office?"
Lin Zhiyan chuckled and gently patted her on the head: "What are you thinking? Most of the people who want to see it already have; how could there possibly be another 10 billion in box office revenue later?"
Although "Your Name" has become a national-level animation, its audience is ultimately not as broad as "Spirited Away." It is mainly watched by young people; elderly people and children generally wouldn't like this animation. At most, they have probably heard of it because of the relentless barrage of advertisements and news reports, even if they haven't seen it themselves.
Originally, the entire island nation had a population of just over 100 million. With a movie ticket costing a little over 1,000 yen and the box office approaching 20 billion, the number of ticket admissions is close to 15 million.
Ticket admissions are different from the number of individual viewers. Some people will watch such a classic animation twice, three times, or even five or six times, but with a population this small, reaching 20 million in ticket admissions would already be heaven-defying. Even with 20 million admissions, it still wouldn't be able to surpass the box office of "Spirited Away," after all, "Spirited Away" had around 23 million ticket admissions.
In the end, for a romance-themed animation to exceed 20 billion at the box office, excluding the children's demographic, is already proof of just how super amazing "Your Name" is. It truly is impossible to surpass "Spirited Away."
Not to mention, Hayao Miyazaki's new animation "The Wind Rises" is about to be released.
While the promotional campaign for "Your Name" is very strong, when it comes to pre-release promotion, it still cannot compare to "The Wind Rises".
At this critical juncture before the release of "The Wind Rises", the only advantage "Your Name" has is that it has already been proven to be a quite successful animation with a stable commercial position. Under these circumstances, it is unlikely that the public will shift all their attention to "The Wind Rises," causing "Your Name" to be neglected.
Regardless, the strong arrival of "The Wind Rises" will certainly still affect the subsequent box office revenue of "Your Name".
In another timeline, "The Wind Rises" was released on July 20th. In the timeline where Lin Zhiyan is, although "Your Name" is still quite fierce compared to ordinary animations at this time, it did not cause "The Wind Rises" to postpone its release, which remained on July 20th.
Then, in its first week of release, despite only being out for two days, this animation unsurprisingly surpassed the weekly box office of "Your Name" and took the weekly box office championship with nearly one billion yen in revenue.
However, what surprised many outsiders was that even though this animation won the weekly box office title, its positive review rate was far behind that of "Your Name."
It's not that the audience was dissatisfied with this animation; compared to other animations released around the same time, its satisfaction rate was undoubtedly number one, but it still couldn't compare to "Your Name," which was released in May.
In its first two days of release, the box office approached one billion yen, which seemed quite high, but it still couldn't match the initial box office performance of "Your Name."
In the following weeks, "The Wind Rises" did consistently dominate the weekly box office, but the box office growth was significantly lower compared to when "Your Name" was topping the charts.
Since the two animations were released more than two months apart, they weren't direct competitors, but looking at all the data, "The Wind Rises" fell short of "Your Name" in every aspect.
Once this was realized, many people on the internet quickly began discussing it.
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