It was late January. At Shirogane Animation's headquarters in Tokyo, the renovation of the building's exterior walls, directed by Rei and executed by Shirogane's professional crew, was finished.
With the decision locked in that Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece would carry the company's core business for the next ten years, Rei was going to push them with everything he had.
Massive illustrations of the three protagonists, Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach, Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto, and Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece, were painted across the headquarters' exterior walls.
It wasn't cheap, but the company was making so much money it had to find ways to spend some of it and contribute to Japan's GDP.
The headquarters building itself had cost Rei well under ten billion yen. He wasn't going to lose sleep over the cost of redoing the facade.
Once the work was done, the Shirogane Animation headquarters could be seen from a distance on the east, west, or south sides, with the three protagonists' giant portraits rising at the top.
The promotional effect was enormous. Any ACGN fan in Japan who came near this district understood at a glance where the current top anime IP company in the country had its base.
The day the renovation wrapped, Shirogane Animation went to the top of every major anime site's trending list, and the fanbase lost its mind.
That Rei was rich was common knowledge in Japan's anime circles. He was an anime creator on paper, but his net worth had reached the level of a heavyweight industry capital holder.
The only thing holding the number down was that Shirogane Animation, holder of so many IPs, had no intention of going public. Plenty of Tokyo capital groups, and even the government, had tried to push Shirogane toward an IPO to raise funds and scale further, and Rei had ignored every one of them. Otherwise the valuation of his net worth would have multiplied several times over.
Knowing Rei was rich was one thing. Watching him spend money this freely left a much deeper impression on anime fans. By Japanese convention, based on which direction the three illustrations faced and which one took the central position, viewers could read the company's priorities. The priority was One Piece, the show premiering in April.
"Something's off here. Is One Piece really the work Shirogane Animation values the most?"
"I don't buy it. What does a pirate anime have going for it?"
"I don't like pirate-protagonist anime either, but I trust Shirogane-sensei's read on the market. His read has never been wrong yet. If he's doing this, he's confident the show's popularity won't fall short of Bleach or Naruto once it airs."
"My scalp went numb. Shirogane-sensei has nerve. If One Piece doesn't land when it premieres, hanging this giant portrait of the protagonist on the headquarters becomes the running joke of the ACGN community for the next decade. Haters will still be dragging it out ten years from now."
"On the other hand, that's confidence. Popping the champagne at halftime is a joke if you lose, sure. What if you don't?"
"Or maybe this is itself a unique promotional move by Shirogane-sensei. The industry generally looks down on pirate-themed anime, right? This is his way of showing his confidence in One Piece. Those interview lines where he said One Piece won't fall behind Naruto or Bleach weren't marketing speak. He meant it."
"Honestly, anyone with eyes can see Bleach and Naruto are building the kind of momentum Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer had. Add One Piece. Can three works of that scale, on the level of Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer, actually coexist in the Japanese anime market at the same time?"
"Who knows? Before Shirogane-sensei came along, most anime broadcasts in Japan peaked at 6% ratings. After him, 7% and 8% became normal. Before, only top dramas, top variety, or shows with massive star casts could pull those numbers. Stop measuring Shirogane-sensei by what the anime industry used to do. Every new work of his rewrites the record book."
"Three super-long series. I'm in high school now and I'm not sure if these will finish by the time I'm out of university with a kid of my own."
"Be bolder. Maybe they won't finish until your kid is out of university."
"Hahaha, how would that even work? Even if Shirogane-sensei wanted to draw that long, can his inspiration sustain it? Even Hunter x Hunter started thinning out after a hundred episodes or so, and the Dark Continent arc hasn't even arrived."
"The Hunter x Hunter theatrical film is in production. It'll release in the New Year slot two years from now."
"On the topic of animated movies, six months from now in the summer slot, Weathering With You, written by Shirogane-sensei, also releases. There's no reason to keep narrowing every conversation to the serialized anime. Shirogane Animation and Illumination Animation have a lot of other projects beyond the Big Three."
For several days, trending topics around the Shirogane Animation headquarters renovation and the Big Three stayed high across the internet. Japan's anime industry had read Shirogane's intent.
Push the popularity of these three works to the ceiling using every available tool. The stance was even more aggressive than the push behind Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer during their serialization runs. Every month, a heavy stream of Shirogane Animation's capital was being pumped into the anime market. Otherwise, no matter how strong the quality of Bleach and Naruto was, how else could they pull this kind of popularity in half a year, with the kind of momentum that was beginning to outshine Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer at a global level?
Now add One Piece.
The earlier industry joke, that Shirogane was setting up three super-long series to rule the next decade of anime, was looking less like a joke and more like what was sitting in his head.
Still.
With three series all expected to run longer than Hunter x Hunter releasing in parallel, could the plots hold without collapsing somewhere along the way?
The question wasn't only being raised by Rei's industry peers. After Hina was born, Rei himself carried a few shadows on it.
Bleach was the easiest. The story held all the way through the Hueco Mundo arc and Aizen's defeat. The one issue was that Ichigo's win over Aizen had been too clean and quick. He could extend the fight sequence as needed when the time came. After that, he would cut the Fullbring arc outright and accelerate through the Thousand-Year Blood War arc.
Naruto had the same shape. The Fourth Great Ninja War arc ran too long, stretching a few days of warfare across well over a hundred chapters. And in the late stages, every villain you took down dragged the next one out from behind him. Pain, Obito, Madara, Zetsu, Kaguya. It felt like, one boss fight stacked inside the next. That was the structure of the story, though, and Rei couldn't tear it up wholesale. He could only compress the stretches that read as obvious filler.
For most anime, as long as the underlying plot has no fundamental flaw, the rest comes down to filler and logic gaps. Once you tighten the pace, the experience climbs a clear step.
The same logic held for One Piece. A lot of post-Marineford arcs ran heavy on filler. The Fish-Man Island arc and the Dressrosa arc were specific examples, along with the heavyweight Wano Country arc. The Kozuki Oden character in particular needed reworking. The entire Wano Country arc was the way it was because that guy was an idiot, which made the protagonists, working to clean up after a fool, look ridiculous by extension.
Rei usually didn't like to touch the plots of these popular masterworks from his previous life. For the parts that had taken concentrated fan fire in his past life, though, Rei would hold his ground and find another route that landed for most fans, based on the feedback he remembered from that life.
"Still, there are at least ten years to work with. No rush."
Rei was teasing Hina in her cradle with a rattle, and a smile sat on his face.
He wasn't talented enough to do everything, but he wasn't so untalented that he couldn't rework that small a slice of plot over that much time. He wasn't reaching for divine fixes either. As long as the changes met the average standard of the work and didn't get him cursed out by fans afterward, that was enough.
Especially the long anime-only filler arcs. He would cut every one.
The Big Three were high-quality masterworks at their core. The flaws all sat in the ending arcs. Since Rei knew where each problem sat, he could work backward from the final result and adjust the path that led there. He had at least that much in him.
"I hope that ten years from now, when these three works reach their conclusions, the Japanese anime industry sends them off with real feeling, instead of fans piling on about the ending the way they did with Naruto and Bleach in my previous life."
Rei looked at his daughter, who was watching him with bright eyes from the cradle, scratched her nose, and smiled.
His daughter caught the smile and started giggling along.
January ended. February arrived.
Early February. Every household in Japan was sliding into the new year holidays. For the anime industry, this February felt like an extra holiday on top.
The Bleach anime had hit the peak of the showdown between Ichigo Kurosaki and Kenpachi Zaraki.
The strongest enemy in the series so far, the most oppressive presence on screen, and the strength and resolve Ichigo showed standing across from him.
These few episodes of Bleach laid out what "hot-blooded anime" meant.
Naruto was running just as strong. In the first round of the Chunin Exams, the written test, Naruto cleared the psychological gate by turning in a blank sheet.
Then came the second stage. Genin from the Five Great Shinobi Nations and the smaller villages teamed up and pushed into the Forest of Death, running timed team battles to seize each other's scrolls.
And in this arc.
The biggest villain of early Naruto, the man who had collected every jutsu he could lay hands on, Orochimaru, stepped onto the stage.
Both shows began rolling out their mid-arc climaxes in parallel.
Every week, after both anime aired, Japan's anime circle lit up with discussion.
As the world-building widened and the cast grew, the inevitable power-scaling arguments that come with long-runners started multiplying.
Overall, Naruto's ranking system stayed clean and logical.
Bleach was all about willpower fights.
Plenty of viewers thought Kenpachi Zaraki was stronger than Byakuya Kuchiki, but Ichigo had taken Kenpachi down with Shikai alone and then struggled against Byakuya Kuchiki even after pulling out Bankai.
In the later Hueco Mundo arc, the cases of circular power-scaling and stacked contradictions only multiplied.
Set those small flaws aside, and Bleach was top-tier at landing hot-blooded beats and pulling emotion out of its audience.
"It feels like a holiday."
"Naruto and Bleach the past few weeks have been pain. They keep cutting at the most critical moment."
"The more I watch Naruto, the more its style reminds me of Hunter x Hunter. Bleach is fine, it's all willpower fights. The power-scaling discussion before a character throws a punch is pointless. What matters is who gets to enter flashback mode in the second half and pull a power surge out of the emotional swing. Naruto is starting to feel a lot more like Hunter x Hunter's tactical combat style."
"You can't call Naruto a Hunter x Hunter copy just because the fights involve some thinking. Who decided battle anime has to be brainless? Protagonists using their heads is a perfectly natural setup."
"The more I watch the Naruto anime, the bigger the world feels. There has to be a clash between the Five Great Shinobi Nations down the line, right? It'll move from one-on-one ninja duels straight into village-versus-village showdowns."
"Probably not. Pacing a large-scale war arc is hard. Shirogane-sensei hasn't built a story on that kind of structure before."
"Bleach's popularity was below Naruto's last month, but starting this month, Bleach is keeping pace with Naruto."
"That's because the plot got more interesting. Same thing over at Dream Comic. These past few weeks, the Naruto and Bleach manga have been trading the number one slot in the rankings. The most awkward position is Shirogane-sensei's wife Miyu's new manga, which is parked at number three."
"The funniest part is that once Bleach went into serialization, it snatched the number one slot off Reincarnation. Once Naruto launched, Reincarnation got pushed down to number three. If it weren't for Shirogane-sensei's new serializations, Miyu would be the number one mangaka on Dream Comic right now."
During the new year holidays, the running argument between Naruto fans and Bleach fans wound down alongside the airing of Naruto and Bleach.
This year's new year holiday slot at the cinema didn't carry any animated movies of Rei's, so the live-action film industry settled back into normal patterns.
The slot's box office champion landed at around three hundred billion yen, a long stretch behind Demon Slayer's global figure from last year, which had cleared seven hundred billion.
The anime crowd cared even less. Without a Shirogane animated film on the slate, they weren't tracking the film industry at all.
After March arrived.
The trend inside the anime circle shifted again, with more abruptness this time.
The further Naruto and Bleach climbed in their recent arcs.
The more the curiosity built inside Japan's anime circle.
Why was One Piece, set to air in only a month, the show Shirogane-sensei valued most?
Naruto and Bleach were already this good. As the creator of both works, why did Shirogane-sensei believe One Piece would top the two of them?
If Shirogane-sensei's read was correct.
Then what kind of divine work was an anime more interesting than Naruto and Bleach going to be?
For a long stretch, every time Rei had a new title launching, the industry's mood was expectations packed to the ceiling.
Everyone's bar for the quality of the work climbed toward the heavens.
That mentality was a double-edged sword.
The work could ride that wave fast, get embraced by fans who liked it, and surge up the anime circle's rankings in no time.
Same as Bleach and Naruto.
But once the quality came in below the bar, the negative reactions came down just as hard.
Masterworks like Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan had each lived through that kind of moment in their early arcs.
And One Piece.
Was, by every measure, the work Japanese fans were waiting on with the highest expectations Rei had ever generated since debuting in the industry. Nothing else came close.
The public side. The giant illustrations on the Shirogane Animation headquarters and Rei's interview lines.
Together they had lifted everyone's expectations in Japan's anime circle to a level that hung in the air like pressure.
The curiosity of casual fans.
The Bleach and Naruto fanbases, dismissive on the outside, taking it seriously on the inside.
Everyone was waiting on the major anime work releasing in one week.
One Piece.