For the actual production of the anime "Kaguya-sama: Love Is War", Lin Zhiyan mainly let the relevant personnel of the company's internal animation production team have free rein.
Although L.S Animation had only been established for a few years, most of its members were actually from the original L.S Produ, with only a small portion being recruited after the company was founded. Aside from the different positioning of the animations they produced, it was actually no different from the original L.S Produ.
The old employees of L.S Produ were all battle-hardened and very experienced in animation production. With sufficient personnel, production schedules, and funding, there was basically no need to worry about the quality of the finished product, and there was no need for Lin Zhiyan to personally intervene.
The otaku dance in the ED of the third episode was a special case, intended to take the anime's popularity to the next level. This was not a question of quality; if Lin Zhiyan hadn't brought it up, it definitely wouldn't have happened, as the possibility of them doing that otaku dance on their own was quite slim.
After leaving the animation department of L.S Animation, Lin Zhiyan looked around a bit more, and then had the main people in charge of the "Kaguya" animation production team called to the conference room for a meeting.
When Lin Zhiyan said he wanted to include an "otaku dance" in the ending credits of Kaguya-sama episode 3, the animation's Supervising Director and Executive Producer were stunned for a moment.
Although it was extremely troublesome, it was Lin Zhiyan's request, so they didn't dare to object. Moreover, Lin Zhiyan coming to give the instructions in person showed how much he valued the Kaguya-sama animation. As long as it wouldn't take up the existing production budget, they were only too happy to pull off something like this; there was no way they would shirk their duties out of fear of trouble.
However, while there was no problem with having an otaku dance in the episode 3 ED, the specifics of how to do it were another matter.
After some discussion in the conference room, they eventually decided that Lin Zhiyan would design the dance, while the actual drawing would be left to high-level animators within the company who had participated in the production of the Love Live! series.
Although according to Nishi Yano, it seemed she would be willing to cosplay as a character from Kaguya-sama and perform the dance as a reference for Lin Zhiyan's drawings as long as the specific animator was Lin Zhiyan himself, Lin Zhiyan had far too many other things to do, so it wouldn't have mattered even if there was plenty of time in the schedule.
Moreover, since he would be the one completing the related songs and personally designing the choreography, even if the key animation wasn't actually drawn by him, the audience would still consider the Secretary Dance his masterpiece. There was simply no need for him to take on the actual drawing as well.
In any case, L.S was the production company for the "Love Live!" series, and they had plenty of animators internally who could draw key frames based on Lin Zhiyan's storyboards, so it wasn't as if it had to be Lin Zhiyan doing it himself.
Ultimately, he had only brought it up to Yano Nishi because she seemed to like cosplay; whether she actually danced it or not didn't really matter.
After confirming the details of the Chika Fujiwara Secretary Dance with the heads of the "Kaguya-sama" production team, Lin Zhiyan returned to the L.S Produ headquarters.
For the following several weeks, he was busy either with his producer duties or with the Chika Fujiwara Secretary Dance.
On television, the "Uma Musume" anime continued to air one episode per week until June 25th, when the story of the first season concluded with the broadcast of the thirteenth episode.
The story after the seventh episode can't be called particularly brilliant, but it is still above average.
As for the content, it's about what some netizens guessed. First, the main character, Special Week, is affected by her state, but later pulls herself together, wins the Tenno Sho (Autumn), and finally defeats "Brocco," a famous horse that came to Japan from France and proved too strong even for El Condor Pasa, in the Japan Cup, becoming the true "Number One Uma Musume in Japan" and fulfilling the promise she made to her mother.
Of course, this is interspersed with the pain and hesitation of Silence Suzuka during her rehabilitation and after her return, when her speed was far from what it was before her injury, and finally her recovery to her pre-injury state.
While not exactly brilliant, there are quite a few highlights, and the anime has consistently maintained its ranking as the most popular anime of the April season.
After the anime ended, the BDs were released. Since the game hadn't been released yet, they couldn't include "King's Power" like game character cards, but they did include some other special features, and in the end, it sold quite well.
I Have a Scroll of Ghosts and Gods
Setting aside the later volumes for a moment, just looking at the first few, sales were under 20,000, but still over 10,000, which is higher than the BD sales of Kyoto Animation's "Violet Evergarden." However, the BD sales for "Violet Evergarden" were the type to gain momentum later on, selling better as time went on.
Regardless, the commercial performance of "Uma Musume" was quite good in 2018.
However, no matter how good it was, the first season's performance could not compare to the second season's.
After the first season was finished, they naturally had to continue with a second season, but Lin Zhiyan was not in a rush.
No matter how explosive the second season's performance might be, it still needed to be coordinated with the game's release to drive the popularity of the entire project. Otherwise, just relying on the anime, no matter how well-made it was, it would be impossible to reach the same level of success as the version from that other timeline.
The focus of animation production had to be on "Demon Slayer," which was set to air in April 2019. As for the second season of "Uma Musume," they were currently waiting for a game.
It wouldn't be too late to start producing the second season of "Uma Musume" once the game was ready to launch.
The game was being developed by L.S Games, which was also Lin Zhiyan's company, so it was different from Cygames in that other timeline.
Because it was different, this was what Lin Zhiyan initially thought:
In the other timeline, Cygames' "Uma Musume" game opened for pre-registration in March 2018, but due to issues like the repeated departure of producers, it wasn't finally released until February 24, 2021.
The "Uma Musume" game that Lin Zhiyan had L.S. Games develop also opened for pre-registration in March, before the first season of the "Uma Musume" animation had even aired, with a scheduled release date of December.
After all, the production company was different, and with Lin Zhiyan occasionally listening to reports on the production progress, it stood to reason that one could expect the game to be released on schedule.
However, perhaps because some of the key personnel at L.S. Games were people Lin Zhiyan had specifically headhunted early on—nearly the same group as the key personnel at Cygames in the other timeline—and because Lin Zhiyan didn't deeply involve himself in the game's production, having only proposed the project...
The result was that by the time the first season of the "Uma Musume" animation finished airing, he discovered that his "Uma Musume" game would also not be able to launch on time.
As to when exactly it would be released, Lin Zhiyan couldn't say for sure, so he could only wait.
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