Winter ended, and spring arrived.
Since the end of Demon Slayer, fans had noticed that Shirogane's appearances at promotional events had dropped off. Even with a new work about to premiere, he was no longer traveling with the production team the way he used to.
He was married, with a child by all accounts, so looking after the family came first. Even so, just before One Piece was about to premiere, that familiar man started showing up across major media outlets again, pushing the launch with everything he had.
Going by reports from every angle, Shirogane's stance on One Piece was clear.
This one was not going to fall behind a single work in his career.
"Shirogane says this every time he has a new work."
"Yeah, but the thing is, Shirogane-sensei hasn't been wrong yet."
"From Hunter x Hunter, to Demon Slayer, to Attack on Titan, then Bleach and Naruto. It's hard to call Shirogane-sensei's interview lines just marketing, isn't it? There's a gap in the commercial value of each title, but the works themselves are all masterpieces of the same tier, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and you can't really rank one over another."
"One Piece. Anime I wouldn't be interested in based on the name alone, but since it's Shirogane-sensei's work, I'll be tuning in tonight for sure."
"For some reason I'm starting to get excited."
"One Piece on Tuesday, Bleach on Wednesday, Naruto on Thursday, and then Friday brings the Big Three updates in Dream Comic. That's probably going to be the norm for the next several years."
"I'm honestly not sure how much these three manga will end up driving Dream Comic's total sales. Before Shirogane-sensei started serializing with the Hoshimori Group, this magazine sold a little over a ten million weekly. They've cleared hundred million now."
"The era we're living in is the second golden age of the Japanese animation industry. To put it plainly, Shirogane-sensei spent eight or nine years pulling the industry, which had drifted into its silver and bronze ages, back into a new golden age. As for Dream Comic, the Big Three serialization run should set sales records in the global manga industry along the way."
"No need to worry too much about that. Tonight a fair number of Shirogane-sensei's 'little haters' are warming up, waiting for him to fall on his face."
"The haters only get one shot at it. If One Piece pulls in the same reception as Bleach and Naruto, the situation becomes unthinkable. Three super-long masterworks serialized at the same time, who else does that on the global stage? He popped the champagne at halftime, putting the One Piece portrait up on the company headquarters in advance, locking in the title's status before launch. If the One Piece premiere actually explodes, he's invincible. Shirogane-sensei will have set up a empire."
"Shirogane-sensei isn't setting up a dynasty. He is the empire. Measured by his achievements inside the animation industry alone, there's no precedent, and there won't be a successor either. Even if one or two geniuses turn up who can put out work at the Demon Slayer level, they'll be buried by Shirogane-sensei on volume of high-quality output across a career. To beat Shirogane-sensei, you need both volume and quality. But is that even possible?"
"At twenty-five, Shirogane-sensei has produced more serialized anime and animated films than anyone in the room. His nine years amount to two lifetimes for most mangakas."
That evening, in the hours before One Piece premiered, Japan's anime fans kept dialing their mood up.
Across the major anime forums and trending search lists, the top story was tonight's One Piece premiere.
In the history of the Japanese animation industry, no anime had ever drawn this much pre-premiere attention.
The promotional weight Shirogane Animation had thrown behind One Piece was extreme, far past the level Demon Slayer had received.
So.
"What is the first episode going to be like?" Kenta sat in his living room, eyes on the television.
A pirate-themed anime.
How was Shirogane going to write the characters in a way the public would accept?
The protagonist burning, killing, and looting? Hard to picture.
But if the protagonist doesn't do any of that, what's the point of giving him that identity in the first place?
I don't get it.
Kenta drew a long breath. On screen, Tokyo Television's feed had begun to load.
Then.
The bright, cheerful theme music came in.
Hm.
Kenta watched the opening with full focus, but the visuals didn't give him much to work with.
A handful of characters appeared, but the opening offered nothing that could be read as a spoiler.
For the Japanese version of One Piece, Rei followed the manga's opening.
In his previous life, the first episode of the One Piece anime had opened on the meeting between Luffy and Coby, pulling a later manga chapter forward into the premiere.
Rei preferred the manga's first chapter.
It went straight to the past between Luffy and Red-Haired Shanks.
That was where Rei's obsession with One Piece had begun in the first place.
This being the Japanese version, the obvious plot holes from his previous life were getting patched as far as possible.
Take the question of how Shanks, one of the Four Emperors, lost his arm to the Sea King in the first place.
No matter how you set that scene up, it didn't sit right.
The power gap in late-stage One Piece was too large. By any read of the world's rules, even if Shanks let the Sea King bite him on purpose, a small sea beast from the East Blue couldn't break through Shanks's defense.
Hard to justify, though, didn't mean Rei would shrug and ride the plot straight to Shanks's famous line about his arm.
Rei would patch what could be patched in this opening segment.
Same applied to Coby, showing up later. He was such an important character in the late game. Why give him an ugly face on debut?
For Kenta and the rest of Japan's anime fans watching now, the plot caught them quickly.
On a small unnamed island in the East Blue, there was a village called Foosha Village.
The famous Red-Haired Pirates and a boy named Monkey D. Luffy were chatting away in the village tavern.
The boy named Luffy wanted Shanks to take him out to sea and let him be a pirate.
Shanks laughed at him for being too small and too weak, teasing him.
Then came the first plot point in the first episode that hooked Kenta.
Annoyed by the teasing, Luffy got angry. Just a little.
Then the man fans in Rei's previous life half-jokingly called the "Bandit King," Higuma, walked in.
He entered the tavern and started stirring trouble, picking a fight with Shanks on purpose and smashing a wine bottle over Shanks's head.
Shanks wasn't bothered and had no intention of fighting back. His own crew openly mocked their captain.
Luffy, already worked up from the teasing, watched his idol Shanks let himself be cowed. It made everything worse. In a temper, he ran to Shanks's chest of valuables, found a strange and ugly fruit, and swallowed it in one go.
Then Luffy became a Rubber Man. The most important setting in the One Piece world, the Devil Fruit, was introduced.
"Devil Fruit? Eat it and you can't swim anymore, but you pick up strange powers in return?" Kenta sat up, interested now.
The shot of Shanks panicking and grabbing Luffy to make him spit the fruit out had Luffy's limbs stretching, his body pulling long like a spring.
"That's neat." Kenta could see what Shanks was anxious about wasn't that Luffy had eaten the fruit.
It was that, after eating it, Luffy would never be able to swim again.
And how is a non-swimmer supposed to be a pirate?
"Pirate." Kenta blinked.
"The pirates in this anime aren't quite what I pictured. The Red-Haired crew at least isn't. They feel more like a band of drifters who don't want to be controlled by governments or officials. They'll draw a sword when crossed, but they're not the burn-and-pillage type."
"If that's the kind of pirate the show is doing, that's actually fine."
What One Piece.
This is an adventure show.
The plot that followed was simple and clean.
For the next several days, the bandit group kept coming back to the village tavern to drink. When they brought up Shanks's pirate crew, they were dismissive, calling them cowards.
Shut up. I won't let you talk about Shanks that way. Don't look down on Shanks and the others. Luffy shouted.
You're being rude, kid.
Luffy's words pulled an ugly response from the bandit boss.
The man didn't hesitate, even with a child standing in front of him, and moved to make an example of Luffy.
By this point, Kenta could guess what came next.
Shanks would show up at the last second and save Luffy.
Kenta had seen this kind of beat in past anime, films, and dramas plenty of times over.
"I know most of Shirogane-sensei's works are slow openers, but is the first episode of One Piece really going to land on something this stock?" Kenta felt a flicker of disappointment.
He also knew it was unrealistic to expect a first episode to deliver a shock plot. World-building takes time.
"Fine. Be patient. Don't set an outrageous bar for this just because of Shirogane-sensei's past run." Kenta drew a breath and kept watching.
Sure enough, with the bandits beating Luffy and moving to stage a public execution, the villagers turned against them, and word reached Shanks's crew.
Shanks's crew arrived in time. Unlike the first meeting between the two groups, this time Shanks's men cut through the bandits fast.
Swords rose and fell with no hesitation, no leniency.
This was where Rei made a small adjustment from the original manga.
In the original, Shanks faced the bandits at full strength, scared the bandit leader enough that he kidnapped Luffy and bolted out to sea, then ran into the sea king. Shanks tried to save Luffy and lost an arm to the beast.
Drop that into the first episode of an anime and there's no friction to it.
A deep-sea giant pushing a hundred tons in weight could chew off Shanks's arm without breaking stride.
But the further One Piece went, the more absurd that setup became. In Rei's previous life, it became one of the classic running jokes inside the One Piece fan community for years.
In the Japanese version, Rei couldn't reshape the core character setup, but he could quietly nerf Shanks with a few patches.
In the scene Kenta was watching, Shanks was running on heavy injuries. The Red-Haired Pirates had come into Foosha Village off a brutal stretch at sea, and Shanks had taken the worst of it. Fresh wounds sat under his coat, his sword arm wasn't moving the way it should, and he still walked out himself to pull Luffy back.
That was as far as the patch went.
The plot continued from there, sticking to the manga's flow from Rei's previous life.
The bandit leader took Luffy out to sea. Thinking he had cleared the village, he threw Luffy, who had eaten a Devil Fruit and couldn't swim, off the boat and tried to flee alone.
Higuma soon ran into the sea king.
Higuma was eaten.
The giant turned on Luffy next. At the critical moment, Red-Haired Shanks reached Luffy's side, shielded him, and brushed past the sea king.
On screen, Shanks's eyes shifted into something terrifying, with small special effects layered on top.
The savage, cruel, massive beast froze in place.
When Rei had watched this scene in his previous life, he had taken it at face value as Shanks's stare scaring the beast off.
After Haki was introduced later in the series, Rei understood that what had happened was Shanks's Conqueror's Haki firing.
So the necessary Conqueror's Haki activation visuals and sound effects were added to the first episode.
Kenta didn't fully understand what he was seeing, but in short.
His blood had started to heat.
If the first episode of One Piece ended at this point, it would still be a cliché opener.
The scene cut. Luffy, soaked in seawater after being pulled out by Shanks, was sobbing in Shanks's arms.
All right, that's enough crying. You're a man, aren't you? Shanks said with a smile.
Their bodies bobbed in the seawater with the waves.
But, Shanks. Your arm.
The shot pulled back.
Kenta saw Shanks's left arm on the screen.
Severed at the shoulder, blood running into the sea.
It was gone.
To save Luffy, it was gone?
In that moment, Kenta felt the breath go out of him.
Shanks's smile, Luffy's open crying, and Shanks's calm voice came in together.
It's a small price to pay, as long as you're safe.
A simple, formula plot, just with one extra turn at the end.
It was enough to land on a longtime anime fan like Kenta. His eyes stung and his nose burned in the same moment.
This is only the first episode, Shirogane-sensei. What are you doing?
Why is this different from your earlier works? Aren't your shows slow openers?
Why does this show, One Piece, make you want to cry after the first episode?
Is it the BGM?
The remaining plot moved into wrap-up.
Shanks set sail, preparing to leave Foosha Village.
Before leaving, he gave Luffy a straw hat and told him it was a hat that mattered to him. He asked Luffy, one day, after Luffy was out at sea, to come find him and return it.
One day, I'm going to put together a crew even better than yours. I'll find the world's greatest treasure. I'm going to be the Pirate King!
At the end of the first episode, Luffy's vow tied straight into the theme.
The promise between Luffy and Shanks became the central spine of this anime.
It also made Kenta, after one short episode, sign off on the protagonist Luffy's drive to go to sea, become a pirate, and become the Pirate King.
This is a promise between men.
It is, in the truest sense, a promise that has to be fulfilled even if it takes a whole life to do it.
What sets One Piece apart from every other Japanese anime in Rei's previous life is this.
The sense of romance in this work is one of a kind.
Rei hadn't felt anything like it in any other anime.
People who like it will always get goosebumps as they watch, moved by the romance running under the plot.
People who don't like it will find it affected and wonder how anyone can buy a pirate world that plays like make-believe.
Kenta, going by what was happening to him, was the first kind.
He could pick up the friendship between Luffy and Shanks from this opening episode, along with the weight of the promise itself.
The ED kicked in.
Kenta reached for the tissues beside him and blew his nose hard.
"Shirogane. You've really done it. And this is only the first episode."