June ended. July arrived.
For the summer theatrical market, Rei did not release a self-produced animated film as he had in each of the previous three years. Projects including Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Suzume's Journey, and Weathering With You had all been greenlit and were in early development within the company.
But the projects were spread across different teams rather than concentrated for rapid production, and as a result their timelines were comparable to ordinary productions from other studios, generally one to two years or longer. With scheduling considerations factored in, the full release of all these films according to plan could take up to five years.
The third Demon Slayer film was already scheduled for the year after next. The Hunter x Hunter film project had been greenlit and was underway. At any given time, Shirogane Animation and Illumination Production Company had over ten active collaborative projects in various stages.
For the major works, Rei invested significant personal attention and remained deeply involved. For others, he provided the script, defined the art style and overall aesthetic direction, and then handed control to the best talent on his staff.
As the two companies had grown, his actual workload had decreased considerably. He spent all that money hiring exceptional people so that the animation studios would not collapse without his constant presence.
For Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece, he needed only one or two days per week to draw out the storyboard drafts he already held in his head and hand them to the respective production teams. Everything else required no further attention from him.
On the other days of the week he came into the offices of the two companies, signed cooperative agreements, checked on production progress across various projects, and left work on time every day.
In the first week of July, Rei still had some additional obligations. He was cooperating with the publicity team to promote Naruto's broadcast.
Compared to Bleach, Japan's anime fans had significantly stronger existing interest in Naruto before a single episode had aired. The reason was straightforward. Works like Hunter x Hunter, One-Punch Man, and Demon Slayer had all featured highly popular ninja-adjacent characters. Beyond that, the concept of ninjas itself carried its own existing resonance in Japan's cultural imagination.
On July 5th, when the first episode of Naruto aired, its momentum completely overshadowed Bleach's premiere at the equivalent stage.
The reception for Naruto's first episode was also clearly stronger.
The world of hidden ninja villages. The Nine-Tails sealed within the protagonist. An outcast child with a clearly established goal from the opening scene. A well-paced narrative structure. Techniques like the Sexy Jutsu and the Shadow Clone Jutsu carried the first half with consistent comedy, while the second half, built around the bond between Uzumaki Naruto and his teacher Iruka, moved a portion of the audience to genuine tears.
Among the Big Three, considering only the early storylines, Naruto was undoubtedly the strongest of the three openings in Rei's assessment.
The world-building was interesting, the protagonist's personality was likable, and the viewing experience alternated between lightness and genuine passion. The only thing he would have changed was reducing the dialogue-heavy confrontations in the later sections in favour of more actual combat.
One Piece had a different kind of challenge. The art style was a significant barrier. People who connected with it found it deeply compelling. People who did not could not accept it after a hundred viewings. The later story arcs also had a tendency toward repetition, with certain major arcs sharing essentially identical narrative structures across different settings.
Bleach had the strongest art style of the three but the loosest underlying structure. The early section was held together by the rescue Rukia premise, which gave the Soul Society arc its direction.
The mid-section was held together by the rescue Orihime premise, which gave the Hueco Mundo arc its momentum. By the later sections, there was no one left to rescue, and even dedicated fans found themselves uncertain about what the driving narrative was. The manga had concluded to widespread dissatisfaction among its readership.
For these specific problems, Rei would make targeted adjustments to the storylines in the Japanese versions of all three works.
Fan commentary arrived immediately.
"It's very interesting. Naruto."
"Although, some of the power-ups are too sudden. Why could he inexplicably produce hundreds of Shadow Clones at the end of the first episode? He can't even manage a standard clone technique, but in a moment of anger he pulls that off?"
"You have to get used to this with Shirogane-sensei's works. Everything else is excellent, but the power scaling isn't strict. It's common for the protagonist's strength to increase dramatically in a moment of anger and pull off an incredible reversal.
Gon's transformation in Hunter is the most extreme example of this. Demon Slayer is the most consistent offender overall. Every character operates in flashback mode when cornered, and after the flashback, they overwhelm their opponent with multiplied combat power."
"Bleach is the same. Ichigo is always pushed to the absolute edge, then reverses the situation. It feels incredible to watch. But when you rewatch it a second time, you can't help noticing the pattern."
"Many fans have complained about that. But what can you say? The actual viewing experience is genuinely enjoyable. How you feel about it analytically after the fact doesn't really change the experience itself. For something like anime, the feeling while watching is what matters."
"Anyway, I really enjoyed the first episode of Naruto. Much better than Bleach's premiere."
"I actually prefer Bleach. The art style is more contemporary, the character designs are considerably more striking. As complete works, I think the two are fairly matched."
"Naruto was interesting from the very first episode. Bleach only became compelling from episode fourteen when Kuchiki Rukia was captured. The difference in starting quality is already apparent."
"A work that's strong in the first episode doesn't necessarily stay strong. I actually tend to prefer works that build gradually. I don't dislike Naruto, I just prefer Bleach slightly."
Although Rei had anticipated it, he genuinely had not expected that before One Piece had even entered the picture, the Naruto and Bleach fanbases were already beginning to develop the competitive dynamic.
In his previous life, early in the Big Three era, fans of all three series had looked down on each other to varying degrees. After Bleach ended early, the rivalry between Naruto and One Piece fans had become particularly intense, and that dynamic had continued for more than a decade after Naruto itself concluded.
Is this already appearing on the very first day of Naruto's launch? Rei looked at his creator account's comment section with a complicated expression.
Both sides were still relatively measured in their exchanges.
But how long would that last given that both series were expected to run for over a decade?
Forget it. This is actually a good thing. This is exactly how works spread. Rei concluded.
The following day, the Naruto manga launched in Dream Comic.
The first chapter was genuinely engaging, but popularity always required time to accumulate. The reader poll for the week placed Naruto second in the magazine, with a vote count roughly five hundred thousand below Bleach and four hundred thousand above Reincarnation.
Bleach held its number one position firmly.
But Rei knew with certainty that as time passed, Naruto's ranking would very likely climb above Bleach's. And when One Piece launched the following year, it and Naruto would most likely alternate between them for the magazine's top position, with Bleach permanently settled into third place.
As for his wife Miyu's Reincarnation.
"Sorry."
Returning home that evening, Rei apologised directly to his wife, who had a melancholic expression.
He genuinely hoped her work would rank higher. In truth, it would have made him happy to see her surpass even the works he had brought here. It would have been enough simply to see her content.
But fan voting behaviour was something beyond his control.
"I pretty much knew this would be the outcome. There's nothing to apologise for." Miyu let out a soft sigh. Then she cupped his face in both hands, looked at him for a quiet moment, and began to speak.
"Though I'm unwilling, I'm also happy. After all, my ability is lower than yours, so I have nothing to say about that. But you absolutely must not lose to anyone else. Whether it's the mangakas of today or those who will emerge in Japan in the future, you must not be surpassed by them."
Rei was momentarily caught off guard by her words, then smiled.
He did not rule out the possibility that among Japan's population of over a billion, a creative genius in animation comparable to the masters from his previous life might one day emerge. But he absolutely refused to believe that he, a synthesis of so many animation creators, could be surpassed by any single person.
Reaching the height of even one exceptional work was not enough. Unless someone could create ten or more top-tier works at the same level the way Rei had, they would never come close to matching his accumulated standing among fans.
"But it's already July. Another year has passed." Miyu glanced at him.
"In three or four months, the baby will be born."
"I usually won't interfere with your work schedule, but after the child is born, as a father, you can't pour all your energy into work. You have to invest something in the family, at least for the child. Or you could try nurturing him. See if he ends up with the anime creative talent to surpass you one day."
"Is that so. I'll give it a try." Rei blinked.
What he was actually thinking was that such a thing was entirely impossible, that he planned to set aside enough for the child so that he could live without worry and be kept well away from the complicated world of the anime industry, where the last thing the child needed was to be creatively overshadowed by his own father.
He could not show any of that in front of Miyu.
Over the following weeks, the two series, Naruto airing on Wednesdays and Bleach on Thursdays, both sustained viewership ratings above seven percent, firmly holding the top two positions among all currently broadcasting works.
Beyond the raw numbers, the popularity and critical standing of both series were growing at a pace that genuinely surprised the rest of the industry.
In Bleach, following Kuchiki Rukia being taken to the Soul Society for execution in episode fourteen, Ichigo, deeply feeling the weight of his own weakness, sought out the mysterious Urahara Kisuke and asked him for help in becoming stronger. Under Urahara's dangerous method of drawing out a Hollow within Ichigo to access greater power, Ichigo encountered the mysterious spirit Zangetsu for the first time in his inner world.
This narrative direction and its conceptual framework completely exceeded the expectations of Japan's anime fans.
Once the episodic pattern of the opening stretch was broken, the main storyline of Bleach became unmistakably clear. Ichigo would grow stronger, and together with the companions he had gathered across those earlier episodes, Ishida Uryu, Orihime Inoue, and Sado Yasutora, he would break into the Soul Society to rescue Rukia.
Naruto was even more direct in its forward momentum.
The most sluggish element of the original early plot, Naruto's initial encounter with Konohamaru, had been reduced from the main story by Rei and the extra scenes were placed in a separate supplementary special. Everything else moved.
The pacing of Naruto's early episodes was simply that strong. The first episode introduced Naruto himself. What followed was Team 7's formation and training, the introduction of Sakura, Sasuke, and Kakashi as central figures, then the Land of Waves mission and the conflict with Momochi Zabuza.
Sasuke awakened his Bloodline Limit in the confrontation with Haku. Naruto erupted with the Nine-Tails' power. After returning from the mission, the Chunin Selection Exams began. The entire early section was continuous main narrative without a single episode that felt expendable.
Only the Konohamaru encounter had been isolated. Revisiting it made clear it had no structural impact on anything, and even in the later portions of the series Konohamaru never became a particularly memorable character.
The result of this adjustment was that Japanese viewers moved from the Team 7 formation directly into the Land of Waves mission. Along the way, Naruto's hand was poisoned, and the humiliation of being mocked by his teammates for weakness drove him, in a moment of desperate fury, to slash open his own hand to drain the poison himself.
If you followed the protagonist Naruto from his introduction through these episodes and said he had not yet produced any particularly exceptional moments, you were not wrong. But he consistently had these completely unexpected acts at critical moments that no rational person could have predicted.
By the fifth week of Naruto's broadcast, whether measured by viewership figures or the internal fan poll data from the Hoshimori Group, Naruto's popularity had fully caught up with Bleach's. In terms of critical reception, it was pulling slightly ahead.
"Amazing. It moved me to tears."
"Although Bleach's recent plot is also compelling, Naruto is clearly more emotionally affecting."
"Kurosaki Ichigo's characterisation is still a bit underdeveloped compared to Uzumaki Naruto. When I watch Naruto, I genuinely feel what he's experiencing. Watching him get mocked by Sakura and Sasuke for being a coward actually made me tear up."
"I'm starting to find Sakura difficult to like. Sasuke is understandable, you can tell he just dislikes weakness, not targeting Naruto personally. But Sakura is actively condescending toward him."
"I'm not sure what Shirogane-sensei's plan is for Sakura. Surely she's not actually intended to be the heroine?"
"Her appeal doesn't come close to Shirogane-sensei's previous female characters. Mikasa, the Tornado of Terror, the Blizzard of Hell, to say nothing of popular ones like Shinobu or Mitsuri."
"The heroine must be Hinata. The way she's been portrayed is genuinely endearing."
"And speaking of female characters, Orihime Inoue in Bleach feels rather flat too. I hope she doesn't end up as the heroine. Ichigo and Rukia belong together."
"Why is everyone talking about Naruto? In Bleach, the protagonist's group is about to break into the Soul Society. Isn't anyone interested in that?"
"Let's discuss it after they break in. It's episode fourteen and the actual main story is finally beginning. I'm genuinely looking forward to the Soul Society arc. I hope after they enter, the plot reaches the level of the Natagumo Mountain Arc in Demon Slayer and cements this anime's status."
"Before these two works started airing, who was saying Shirogane-sensei's peak was Demon Slayer? In terms of the early episodes alone, both Bleach and Naruto are already more engaging than Demon Slayer's opening stretch."
History always repeated itself.
Although Rei had long known that characters like Sakura Haruno and Orihime Inoue would draw the audience's dislike, watching this trend emerge so early in the series still produced a feeling of mild helplessness.
He had already made small adjustments to their dialogue and presentation in the Japanese versions to make them more sympathetic. But the core of their personalities could not be fundamentally altered, and fans saw through to the essence regardless.
In his previous life, both characters had occupied consistent positions at the top of unpopularity rankings.
In Japan, it appeared he could not reverse those reputations either.
"Forget it. You can't force a change in something that is what it is." Rei shook his head. As long as the two protagonists, Naruto and Ichigo, were loved by the audience, that was what mattered.
He looked at the comment section of his creator account.
At a glance, it was dense with Naruto and Bleach fans debating the plots and trading criticisms of each other's preferred series.
Naruto fans were dismissing Bleach. Bleach fans were returning the favour toward Naruto. It had already begun.
The great war between the fanbases of the two works had commenced.