Time moved into December.
Bleach had been broadcasting since April of last year. Naruto and One Piece had followed across the past year and a half.
Up to now.
Across the past ten years, the popularity of works Rei had brought into Japan, like One-Punch Man, Hikaru no Go, and Arcane, had been outshone by the Big Three.
Only works like Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer still kept respectable discussion online. If Rei didn't milk those IPs with spin-offs or theatrical films, the popularity of Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece would come to take over from all of Rei's earlier works and sit as the dominant topics inside the Japanese animation circle.
As the plots of Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece moved into their main arcs, they showed, much like in Rei's previous life, a dominant level of popularity inside the Japanese animation world.
Most works of this kind take two or three years to ferment their popularity from launch into a massive hit.
It was different in Japan. With Shirogane on the byline, the global promotion speed of these three works ran at absurd speed.
Inside a year and a half, the shape of their market momentum was already in place.
Inside Tokyo, all it took was walking into an ACGN commercial district to see promotional posters and large-screen portraits of Luffy, Zoro, Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi, Ichigo, Kenpachi, and Aizen on every surface. In primary and secondary schools, discussion of these three works had become a trend among the students.
Between Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece, which one was currently the top anime in Japan?
The arguments around cross-world power scaling of Big Three characters, or which character was coolest, kept rolling.
The Tokyo region was a microcosm of the Japanese animation world.
The Japanese animation world was a microcosm of the global animation world.
In this dimension's Japan, the Japanese anime circle sat at the center of the world's animation works. Anime that took off in this circle spread across the globe.
Elements tied to Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece went global within a very short stretch.
By the end of December, the global demand for IP collaborations and merchandise orders for the Big Three reached absurd figures, all feeding back into Shirogane Animation.
Looking at the reports her subordinates had handed up, Misaki felt a touch overwhelmed.
Put plain, Shirogane Animation's development had already been considered fast.
When Demon Slayer was at its peak, the IP had been managed in stride without major issues.
But now Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece were exploding worldwide all at once.
The company's internal headcount was well short.
Overseas fans were running just as hot. It wasn't a situation where the domestic headquarters could handle everything by remoting in to overseas staff. Should they set up overseas branches to manage IP-related business?
The domestic side was already in disarray from the lack of manpower as it stood.
"This is too much," Misaki said, frowning.
For the first time, she was feeling a suffocating pressure because the works under the company were performing too well.
In Rei's previous life, Shueisha had years of experience managing IPs like Slam Dunk and Dragon Ball, with deep local connections and a wide overseas cooperation network with major companies.
Shirogane Animation was walking a similar path, but Rei's company had only been founded a handful of years ago. On industry connections and base, it was thin.
Rei was rich, but no matter how rich, you can't put up a skyscraper in three days.
So the pressure of building company departments and operations sat squarely on Misaki.
"When I agreed to be Rei's CEO, I didn't actually picture the company hitting this size."
While signing documents, stamping seals, and routing files for review, Misaki let her mind drift, complaining in her head.
"There's no way around it. Those two only know how to create anime. If Miyu and Rei actually ran the company, plenty of domestic and overseas partners would scam them flat..."
Misaki shook her head and got back to serious work.
She was already on the ship. Complaining was pointless. And Rei hadn't treated her badly. Across her years as Shirogane Animation's CEO, the compensation she pulled in sat at the absolute ceiling for the position inside the industry. If the number leaked, it would shock the professional managers in the animation circle for a year.
"How far can Shirogane Animation grow over the next few years?"
After her work was done, Misaki turned the question over again.
Even as CEO, she still couldn't estimate the company's future trajectory.
What she did know was that, going by the popularity of the Big Three and the combined value of the many hit IPs Rei had created in the past.
If Shirogane Animation went public, the valuation would land in the hundreds of billions, with room to climb into the trillions.
Even Hunter x Hunter, finished for several years, still pulled in tens of billions of annual profit globally from various merchandise lines. That was without counting recent hits like Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer.
Now there were the rising IP stars: Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece.
"Could it be that in a few more years, the names of the couple, Rei and Miyu, are going to appear at the top of the Japanese Rich List?"
It seemed simple on the surface. The longer Misaki sat with it, the more plausible it felt.
On revenue scale alone, Shirogane Animation was nothing compared to leading firms in manufacturing, construction, or automotive in Japan.
On profit margin, it was a different picture.
In the animation industry, once you reach the top, it's very profitable.
Shirogane Animation was the top of the top. Companies in other industries grinding through fierce competition might pull ten times the revenue of Shirogane Animation but not pull higher profits. And this company wasn't public. It was a private enterprise where Rei held 100% of the equity.
Even so, in the eyes of a core member like Misaki, the data analysis showed the company still had huge room to grow.
The thought that all this money would end up being burned through by her own niece pulled a smile out of Misaki.
"Little Hina. Your daddy has earned enough money to last you countless lifetimes."
Just then a knock came on Misaki's office door.
Rei walked in with his usual calm expression, a large stack of planning reports in his hands.
"What new idea is it now?"
Reading Rei's face, Misaki understood right away that this genius of hers had been putting that brilliant brain of his to work again.
Last week they had signed off on a plan to spend ten billion to buy an old stadium near the company. The company's professionals were currently negotiating with the district government. They were planning to spend another ten billion on the renovations to host Japan's largest anime convention, the Shirogane Anime Expo, in the middle of next year, with the goal of marketing the company's various IPs.
From next year on, they would use that space as the venue for marketing projects, fan meets, regular anime expos, and a range of other activities. They were also planning to train up a few ACGN idol girl groups to hold "moe" events on a regular cycle.
There was also a plan to pick up some cheap land and old houses near the company for later construction and renovation.
In short, Rei looked like he was preparing to turn the company and the surrounding area into a famous anime holy land inside Japan.
The kind of place ACGN fans would think of as their exclusive gathering spot.
The Tokyo government was strongly in favor of Rei's ideas. They couldn't talk Rei into taking the company public for financing, and since Rei had both the ideas and the financial strength, the local government was on board with cooperating on this kind of cultural tourism investment project.
The Japan dimension didn't have places like that, so it wasn't easy for Misaki to see Rei's thinking and final goal.
Rei had a similar concept from his previous life. A "Plus" version of Akihabara, the anime holy land in Japan. With Shirogane Animation's headquarters here as the cultural anchor, the attention of tens of millions of anime fans in Japan was already pointed here.
If Rei took the lead on this kind of project, the probability of success would be at its highest. The company was earning so much money, leaning just on investments in classic anime like the Big Three, with returns running over ten times the input, that it couldn't spend the cash even if it tried.
Rei himself was full of interest in making investments like this.
He hadn't come to Misaki today to discuss any of it, though.
"Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach are all being prepped for game adaptations. I'm a veteran gamer myself and have some sense of game production. So." Rei smiled as he handed the planning book to Misaki.
He was a novice on game production.
In his previous life, though, he had been a skilled gamer.
He knew the gameplay, strengths, and weaknesses of the various games made from the Big Three like the back of his hand. Leading a game development team would be a stretch. Taking the essence and dropping the weak parts of the successful games from the three major IPs in his previous life, and using that to make something stronger in Japan, was within reach.
"So you're not satisfied with just stepping into the company's anime production projects anymore? Now you've set your eyes on the games industry?" Misaki's tone was odd.
"I'm still young. I have to learn everything," Rei laughed. "Only three sides of our company headquarters have the huge illustrations of Naruto, Ichigo, and Luffy painted by the construction team. There's still one wall left empty. I'm saving that one for a monkey with a broken tail a few years from now. On the rooftop, I might have a giant image of a yellow-electric mouse built."
A monkey with a broken tail?
An electric mouse?
Misaki hesitated to say anything.
Picture the company headquarters with the protagonists of the Big Three on three walls, plus a giant illustration of a monkey with a broken tail on the fourth, and a giant yellow mouse standing on the roof.
"The aesthetic is genuinely awful. A perfectly fine headquarters building, made this tacky." Misaki gave Rei zero face.
"That's exactly the style Japan's ACGN fans like," Rei laughed.
Misaki went quiet.
She understood that for all his light tone, Rei had to be talking about two major anime IPs inside his head that sat on the same level as the Big Three.
It was that Rei didn't have the bandwidth to produce them right now.
"In any case, I'll have to ask our brilliant CEO Misaki to handle the details with the game department. My ideas are already in these planning books. If they can reference the suggestions inside during the game production process, that would be ideal," Rei said with a smile.
"Understood."
Rei let out a small breath.
After the serialization of the Big Three got on the rails, his workload had dropped a fair amount.
The startup phase of the three anime had eaten a chunk of his energy, but once a long-running work hits a certain point, it carries its own momentum.
Rei only had to provide scripts on a regular schedule. On anime production, his subordinates were proficient and gave him nothing to worry about.
With time, Rei would end up tinkering with a lot of other things and generating ideas.
"People can't sit still." Rei walked up to the rooftop of the headquarters and looked down at the wide area below the company building.
It was a lively patch, but it didn't belong to Tokyo's most central commercial district.
If Rei's idea came together, could he ride Shirogane Animation's IPs and the headquarters' location advantage to turn this area into an ACG holy land along the lines of his previous life's Akihabara?
That remained to be seen.
If the company eventually built out comprehensive departments for animation, manga, and games over the next few years, Rei wouldn't be limited to porting anime works from his previous life into this world.
Setting aside famous IPs like Pokémon, plenty of ancient myths and historical novels from his previous life could also be adapted into game works and released in the Japan dimension.
Black Myth Wukong, for instance.
Rei's favorite type of work was the Japanese-style anime from his previous life.
That didn't mean he limited himself to Japanese anime alone.
Those ideas might not formally start for several years, or even a decade.
December ended.
Rei's fans in Japan had no idea what he was thinking or what plans he was putting together at the end of this year.
His fans were focused on the plot progression of Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece.
Rei cut the length of Bount arc, which ran dozens of episodes of original animation in the source material, and moved straight into the Arrancar arc from the manga's main storyline.
In the current Bleach plot, several of the Espada under Aizen had invaded the real world, clashed with Ichigo and the others, and figured out what was unique about Ichigo's friend Orihime Inoue.
Looking at Bleach as a work, the two arcs that fans find most compelling both have a main plot of the protagonist Ichigo saving someone.
The Soul Society arc was about saving Rukia.
The Hueco Mundo arc was about saving Orihime Inoue.
A lot of fans in Rei's previous life didn't like Orihime Inoue and felt that without her in the picture, Ichigo would have ended up paired with Rukia Kuchiki.
Especially when Orihime Inoue, on her way out of the real world, tried to steal a kiss while Ichigo was asleep, plenty of Rukia fans felt like they were being cuckolded. They had long thought of her as a manipulative type.
It was the standard problem of battle manga authors not knowing how to handle romance.
Not just Kubo. Kishimoto couldn't either, nor could Oda, nor Akira Toriyama.
Luffy's romance reads as a joke, the whole thing is Boa Hancock's unrequited love. Goku's situation was the same. As for Naruto, Kishimoto tried to dip into portraying the plot with Sakura after Shippuden, got flamed hard by fans, at the level where it would have been better to skip it entirely.
In Bleach, though, without Orihime Inoue, the middle of the work has no real main storyline.
Ichigo's ultimate goal was just to live a peaceful and stable life.
If he hadn't met Rukia and hadn't gained the power of a Soul Reaper, he would have already had his dream by the end of episode one.
So as the anime's author, he could only use the old Spider-Man-saving-his-girlfriend trope to force this guy who just wanted to lie around to move and push the plot forward.
The main direction was old, the process was hot-blooded.
So, with Bleach fans in Japan grumbling about it, the character Orihime Inoue began her run in this arc and started to play her role.
Naruto walked into its most compelling plot since the broadcast began.
Naruto vs Neji.
For One Piece.
Don Krieg was beaten by Luffy.
After Gin left a promise with Sanji that they would reunite one day on the Grand Line, the man vanished into the sea.
Then the whole work moved into the final boss arc of the early East Blue saga.
The Arlong arc.
After this arc wraps up and a simple reorganization.
One Piece would step onto the main track of the story.
The Grand Line.
By a coincidence, all three works were primed to bring their full power to bear at the start of the new year.