In mid-to-late September, the Hoshimori Group began releasing the tankobon volumes of Bleach on schedule.
Rei's weekly manga output was already enormous, and the series' popularity had climbed at such a pace that Hoshimori didn't hesitate over the tankobon rollout. There was no concern about the volumes catching up to the serialization.
The release plunged the manga industry into another round of self-doubt.
Sales couldn't match the numbers posted by the Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle Arc volumes, but the first volume of Bleach sold close to ninety million copies in its opening week, and the series had only been running for a few months.
In such a short window, could Bleach have built up that many fans willing to buy the physical volumes?
Some assumed Shirogane's new manga was riding on his accumulated fame. If an unknown mangaka had published Bleach, they argued, the early chapters wouldn't have hit this hard, and the series would have needed years to find a following.
Industry insiders knew better. Shirogane did command an extraordinary built-in readership now. His work could spread through Japan's ACGN fan community with little marketing spend.
But if the work itself lacked quality, sales wouldn't move regardless. Shirogane had so many strong titles, and fans had plenty of avenues to support him. ACGN readers were not going to spend money on a work they didn't enjoy.
Bleach had ridden Shirogane's name to a fast start, but the tankobon numbers proved the series had its own legs. Shirogane's presence had only let it skip the long popularity build-up most tankobon required.
Still, once the first week of sales wrapped, a question began to surface for industry peers and Japan's ACGN fans alike.
Online, Bleach's reception was starting to slip behind Naruto's.
The arc inside the Soul Society had become compelling, and Ichigo Kurosaki's fight against Ikkaku Madarame over the past two weeks had drawn a strong market response.
Even so, on the other side, the Land of Waves arc with Naruto Uzumaki and Team Seven against Zabuza Momochi was pulling bigger numbers.
Bleach and Naruto aren't the same kind of work as Attack on Titan.
Attack on Titan sells on world-building and revelation.
These two lean on character writing and combat.
Setting the protagonists aside, on the supporting cast front, Bleach's Yasutora Sado and Uryu Ishida didn't yet have the presence of Kakashi or Sasuke Uchiha.
Overall, while the two works sat at different points, when measured against anything else on the market, both landed as dimension-shattering blows.
Even Miyu's new manga, Reincarnation, a high-quality work by any reasonable standard, was being crushed in head-to-head publication with Bleach and Naruto.
Time slipped into late September.
Rei had trimmed unnecessary scenes from both anime adaptations and accelerated the pacing. In fight sequences he stuck to the manga's original storyboards, refusing the static shots and recycled cuts the Bleach and Naruto anime of his previous life had used to save budget. The plot of both shows moved at a clip.
"It's going to be another super hit. Rei, you..." Miyu, dressed in loose clothes, leaned against the window and looked at the online reactions to Naruto and Bleach. Her voice carried a particular weight.
Rei had moved the obstetrics department of a private hospital, equipment and staff and all, into their home to prepare for Miyu's delivery.
The due date was still a month out, but Rei was not going to allow any accidents. Miyu thought the setup was overkill, but there wasn't much to be done about it. Rei was too famous, and Miyu wasn't far behind. If she'd waited at a hospital, fans from Tokyo and across the country would have overrun the place.
Rei wasn't a wasteful person, but with the money coming in, he had to spend some of it sensibly.
"What super hit? What are you talking about?" Rei was bent over the adjacent desk, helping Miyu ink the original pages for Reincarnation.
He worked fast. He had Miyu's storyboard drafts memorized, and before his pen touched the page, the entire panel had taken shape in his mind. He was transferring what he already saw, and his hand moved without hesitation.
If you wanted a real-world example of someone drawing manga with total certainty, Rei was the textbook case. Miyu watched her husband work, and her eyes filled with envy.
This was a level of execution only Rei could reach. After his transmigration he had twice the mental bandwidth of an ordinary person, and no one else could replicate that through study.
"After Hunter, Demon Slayer, and Attack on Titan. A new era is starting..." Miyu held up her tablet to show Rei the headline she'd been reading.
It was the latest piece from Japan's largest anime media outlet.
"Do they have to make such a production out of it?" Rei glanced at the screen and chuckled. "That site is fickle. It's the one that trashes me, and it's the one that praises me. A few of my biggest anti-fans built their followings there. Sooner or later I'll catch them on something and serve a lawyer's letter."
"You hold grudges," Miyu laughed. "But the numbers are wild. In half a year, how have Bleach and Naruto taken over from Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer in fan attention?"
"That's the anime industry. No matter how strong a series is, once it ends, the heat drops fast. Same goes for the name Shirogane. If I retired tomorrow, Japan's anime fans would find the next genius creator and follow that person's work instead," Rei said.
"Is that why you're running super-long series like Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece?" Miyu asked.
"Part of it. The bigger reason is that those three are the strongest works of my career, taken as a whole."
"And in ten years, when they wrap up?"
"Then other long-runners take their place," Rei said.
Rei was already stretched thin. Otherwise he'd have slotted in Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, Ghost in the Shell, Slam Dunk, and JoJo as well.
"Don't worry," Rei said, looking at Miyu. "In this lifetime, as long as I want to keep drawing, there will never be a day when my well runs dry. As long as I refuse to admit defeat, no creative talent that emerges in Japan, so long as they stay within the human range, is going to beat me."
The Japanese anime industry had been developing for decades. It wasn't unreasonable to imagine its overall level surpassing that of Rei's previous life. But on a personal level, no one creator was going to overtake him.
Miyu's mouth fell open, and she needed a moment before she could answer.
"If anyone else said that, Rei, I'd already be laughing. You are arrogant."
"It's confidence," Rei said.
After the company's focus shifted onto Bleach and Naruto, market chatter about Rei himself dropped off.
Long-form manga doesn't operate the way Attack on Titan does, with a piece of foreshadowing or a reveal every two or three episodes.
It's forward motion. An arc villain appears, and the arc builds to a serious fight with that villain.
Compared to the freedom-and-peace themes Rei had explored in Attack on Titan, the core stories of Bleach and Naruto aren't as heavy.
The audience eats it up.
Attack on Titan's thematic ambition was real, and within anime circles its writing was respected, but the series carried a reputation for brutality.
Bleach and Naruto might not carry that kind of weight, but their reach in the market goes far past anything Attack on Titan ever pulled.
Once October arrived, the ratings for both anime broke 8% at the same time, taking the first and second spots across every major Japanese network.
The truce between Bleach fans and Naruto fans, held at first out of deference to the shared creator, had cracked into something close to hysteria.
In macro terms, Naruto was running ahead. But plenty of viewers couldn't stand Naruto and preferred Bleach.
Taste isn't something you can argue people out of. In the ACGN fan community, though, the urge to compete is an obsession almost every viewer carries.
Rei's earlier works had released one at a time, which never gave the two camps an arena to fight in.
Now that arena existed.
"Just wait. Naruto is going to bury Bleach in another two months of airtime."
"Spare me. What's so compelling about a story built around three twelve-year-olds? Especially Sakura. She's such a performative little princess. Two episodes was all it took for me to drop Naruto."
"And Bleach is better? Orihime Inoue is a higher-grade version of the same act, pretending to be an airhead. Watching Ichigo Kurosaki get played by a girl like that is comedy."
"Better than Naruto freezing every time he sees Sakura."
"Forget the characters. Bleach is just people slashing each other with swords. The combat is one note. Naruto has every kind of Ninjutsu, with moves all over the map."
"What I can't stand is long-range beam exchanges. Bleach lands its hits with steel against flesh. That's where the heat is. Naruto's combat is Shadow Clones, Transformations, people turning into wood, shuriken. The longer I watch those, the more absurd it feels. Are these still humans? Did conservation of mass and energy stop applying?"
"Looking for physics in a fictional anime world is its own kind of insanity. By that logic, does it make sense that humans in Bleach have souls and fight inside the Soul Society, a realm of consciousness?"
"As someone who loves both shows, I have to say the fan war is half the entertainment at this point."
Her fingers tapped at the phone screen. After a comment running past a hundred words, Saya let out a long breath.
She had spent the entire day arguing with Bleach fans.
Her original intent had been to stay measured and explain what moved her about Naruto. The other side answered her restraint with full mockery, picking at her favorite Kakashi in particular. They insisted no handsome man would ever wear a mask, that Kakashi's unmasked face would turn out to be a catfish, with thick lips, a flat nose, crooked teeth, possibly outright disfigured.
So no one could blame her for turning into a keyboard warrior.
"When does Kakashi actually take the mask off, though?" Saya thought, once the heat in her head began to drop.
He couldn't be a catfish the way those people kept claiming, could he?
In real life, some guys did wear a mask well and looked underwhelming without one. The thought alone, ugh.
She checked the time. Past 7:50. Saya cut the loop in her head.
She turned on the living room TV and switched from Ion Television to Capital Television.
Her household used the TV twice a week.
Wednesdays for Naruto.
Thursdays for Bleach. The last airing had been the previous Thursday.
Capital Television's deal with Shirogane was lighter, so its commercial wrap was less aggressive.
At this point in the slot they were still running the weather forecast.
"Ion Television would rather burn through thirty minutes of ads before Shirogane-sensei's show comes on. Capital Television is too soft," Saya muttered to herself.
Time moved. After a brief black on the screen, Naruto's distinctive opening theme cut in.
The plot picked up from last week. Sasuke had taken a fatal-looking hit from Haku to save Naruto and been left for dead. Naruto, set off by rage, had unleashed the Nine-Tails' chakra and torn into Haku.
Haku flashed back to himself for a moment, and Naruto realized the "older sister" he'd met earlier in the forest had in fact been a strikingly pretty older boy.
Haku, defeated, expected Zabuza to discard him as useless and asked Naruto to finish him. After the opening theme ended, the cut returned to Naruto mid-swing, only for Haku to stop him at the last second. Then, in a move new to Japanese anime fans but a familiar staple to viewers from Rei's previous life, Haku flickered across the battlefield in an instant and reappeared between Zabuza and Kakashi's incoming Raikiri.
"Ah?" Saya's chest tightened.
She hated Zabuza, but Haku had been one of her favorites.
Picked up by Zabuza, raised as a weapon, undefeated until now, willing to throw his life away to repay the man who took him in.
Foolish loyalty, sure. But foolish loyalty was still loyalty, and a foolishly loyal villain beat a flat one by miles.
She, no, he, knowing Zabuza would discard him after defeat, still chose to spend his last breath buying Zabuza another chance.
The Zabuza on screen, however, found a separate use for Haku. With Haku's body pinning Kakashi in place, Zabuza moved to cut the two of them in half with one swing of his great sword.
"What a piece of garbage," Saya said, fists tight.
A subdued BGM came in. Saya's nose prickled.
The cut went to young Haku, smiling, speaking to a younger Zabuza.
[Please, just treat me as a tool!]
Then Kakashi, set off by what he had just seen, broke past Zabuza and crippled both his arms.
Was it over?
This arc.
Saya let out a long breath.
It had been a strong sequence. Something still felt unfinished.
Haku, given so much screen time, ending his life serving a man like that. A waste.
He'd followed the wrong person.
Then the next villain stepped on screen.
Gato. The wealthy backer who had hired Zabuza's crew in the Land of Waves.
With Zabuza beaten, Gato came out to finish him off in person, planning to skip the payment and pay Zabuza back for old insults at the same time.
The first scene in Naruto built to draw real tears, and one of the rare classics of the entire series, began to unfold in front of Saya.
Naruto had seen what Haku had done for Zabuza.
Haku had loved Zabuza, and Zabuza hadn't reacted to his death at all. Naruto came apart.
He shouted at Zabuza.
[Don't you feel anything? Is this what you turn into when you get strong? He died for you. He died as a tool, with no dream of his own. That's too cruel.]
The score swelled at the right beat.
In a standard anime, Zabuza, the hated villain, would have been pushed into deeper coldness here, to make him irredeemable.
Instead, the Zabuza who had been ready to slice Haku and Kakashi apart in one stroke had tears welling at the corners of his eyes, sliding down the bandages on his face.
Human feeling reached across.
[Kid. Don't say any more.]
Zabuza didn't say much. His wet eyes carried the rest.
Cutting Haku's body in two had been the cold Ninja calculus in him at work.
Now, with Naruto's words inside him, and with Gato having burned the contract, Zabuza had no further reason to fight Naruto's group. He let his human side show, to Naruto and to the audience at home.
Saya, already deflated, teared up at the look on Zabuza's face.
[I know. That kid was just too gentle.]
[Ninja are still human. None of us turn into emotionless tools. I lost.]
Zabuza bit through the bandages over his mouth. His arms were finished, so he clamped a kunai between his teeth and charged into Gato's group, the men who had betrayed him. At the close of the episode, Zabuza, drenched in blood, drove the kunai in his mouth into Gato's chest and sent the body off the bridge into the river. Blood rained down from above.
Kakashi carried the dying Zabuza over to Haku's body.
Zabuza looked at Haku next to him and gave his last words.
[At the end, at least let me be next to you. If it's possible, I want to go to the same place you went.]
Saya watched the screen with tears in her eyes.
Naruto's story up to this point had run on momentum and energy.
This episode was the first one built to break the audience.
In a single episode, the deaths of two villains who had been given real time on screen had stirred up everything tender in her.
These two had earned their deaths. They had done plenty of evil.
Even so, her sympathy for them rose up on its own.
Strip it down and neither of them had been born evil. Their circumstances had forced them into it for the sake of survival.
Ninja.
The word surfaced in Saya's head.
This arc, beyond producing two villains who had moved her, had laid out a world that was cruel and tender at once.
The Ninja profession, until now something Saya had only picked up in glimpses through Hunter, One-Punch Man, and Demon Slayer, had stayed vague.
Telling the audience through dialogue that the Ninja world is cruel never lands with weight.
This arc, in under ten episodes, had given Saya something concrete to hold.
What kind of world the Ninja world is.
What goal Naruto, the protagonist, was driving toward.
And what kind of cruelty and hardship might be waiting along the road to becoming that Naruto.