"Cheers."
"Cheers."
"We've reached this day at last."
The hall was packed with a dazzling spread of food, with handsome and well-dressed attendants moving through the room carrying trays.
In early March, Rei, in the name of Shirogane Animation, gathered all the creative personnel involved in the manga, anime, and game spin-offs of the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba IP across the past six years for a celebration at a grand hotel he booked in downtown Tokyo.
Across eighty-plus episodes of the Demon Slayer anime and four movies, the key production staff in the credits alone numbered over a thousand, not counting the many people on the operations side.
Voice actors for key roles, lead animators, background artists, photographers, musicians.
All of them gathered today to take part in the completion celebration for Demon Slayer.
For a globally famous major anime IP like this, Rei wasn't going to be stingy with the closing celebration banquet.
Whether they were production staff from Shirogane Animation or Illumination Animation, every attendee would receive valuable gifts and prizes from Rei before the night was out.
"The main story is finished. From here on, it's original spin-off plots."
"Iguro and Mitsuri are a couple in the modern reincarnation arc, and there's Kyojuro Rengoku's modern student life, and the Giyu and Shinobu Kocho plot."
Miyu stood beside Rei, greeting guests at the celebration in her role as the lady of the house for Shirogane Animation and Illumination Animation. She kept talking through the whole stretch, asking Rei one question after another.
"Rei, are you really comfortable handing the creation of the characters' modern spin-off anime to other anime screenwriters?"
"There's nothing to worry about. The final spin-off scripts get reviewed in full by the company's Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba operations team. If they don't meet the quality bar, the projects don't get approved," Rei laughed. "Besides, to make an IP big, leaning on me alone is too thin."
In this Japan, the approach might be unheard of, but in his previous life, this kind of operation was common.
The screenwriters and directors for the Gundam series had cycled through countless generations. Doraemon wasn't a manga drawn by a single person from start to finish either.
In the later stages of Detective Conan, Gosho Aoyama set up a professional screenwriting team to draft scripts while he only handled the main storyline and the overall direction. Otherwise, coming up with case-solving plots for over a thousand episodes alone would burn out a person's head before he'd cooked up so many bizarre cases.
Even so, Gosho Aoyama was responsible for all the romance plots in Detective Conan. He openly complained in interviews that the romance plots written by the screenwriting team were too weak to be watchable.
Other examples include the Fate series, started by Kinoko Nasu, with Gen Urobuchi later joining to create Fate/Zero, followed by a stack of spin-off mobile games and anime, each with different screenwriters and creators.
Demon Slayer's popularity is locked in, and its IP value is high. Ending it would be a waste. Making spin-off anime is something fans want, and from the company's profit angle, it's necessary.
"I'm worried the work coming out of these screenwriting teams will tarnish your Shirogane name."
"It won't." Rei laughed. "My fans have that much sense. And you have to believe in our company's screenwriting team. Before joining Shirogane Animation and Illumination Animation, they were lead screenwriters on a lot of popular anime."
In his previous life, even with all the criticism aimed at Boruto, few people targeted Kishimoto.
Everyone understood that no matter how bad Boruto was, you could at least see Sasuke and Naruto in it, and that was enough.
"Boss, come grab a drink."
Rei clinked glasses with several of the company's directors while he kept talking.
Rei didn't run a strict hierarchy at the company. He often moved through the production teams to discuss the direction of anime episodes with the staff. Most of them were on good personal terms with Rei, so they didn't hold back much at the celebration banquet.
"You have a healthy mindset, letting the staff have free rein on creating spin-off works for an IP like Demon Slayer," Miyu said.
"A person's strength has limits. No matter how strong an IP is, how high can one person push it alone?" Rei said.
The Pokémon series isn't the work of one person either.
Would the Marvel series have hit global popularity off comics alone? Without the adaptations and performances of a stack of movie directors, screenwriters, and stars, the Marvel IP would have ended as a footnote in history alongside the company's bankruptcy.
Miyu thought about it for a long moment and nodded.
"Then what about Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach?"
"When these three reach their end, are you going to do the same?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Rei laughed.
In his previous life, even with the criticism of Boruto, it, together with a stack of adapted games, kept Naruto, an anime that ended ten years ago, at the front of the anime world, holding considerable popularity. The IP.
Still pulled in annual total revenue of several hundred billion yen.
At most, when ten years passed and the anime reached that point, Rei would just put more thought into the script when adapting Boruto, to dodge the pitfalls.
Miyu looked at Rei, and a smile came to her face.
"Forget it, you have your own plans. Since you've already thought through the potential drawbacks and have your responses set up, I was worrying about nothing."
At this point.
The lights in the celebration banquet hall dimmed, and the room grew lively.
Inside the pre-installed holographic projection rig, scenes from the Demon Slayer anime came into the air above the venue.
The animation sequence was something the staff on the company's Demon Slayer production team had spent months rushing to complete.
It was a never-before-seen video of Demon Slayer characters.
Over a thousand people in the audience watched the scene.
The reporters the company had invited held their breath, filming the scenes with cameras in a corner of the hall.
They knew tomorrow's headlines in the Japanese ACGN world would for sure be this brand-new farewell video from the Demon Slayer characters for the work's conclusion.
In mid-March, the third movie of the Demon Slayer Infinity Castle Arc ended its theatrical run.
The anime ended up at a total box office of five hundred and twenty billion in Japan and two hundred and thirty billion yen overseas.
It broke the historical box office record for movies in Japan.
It also became the highest-grossing movie IP series in Japan's film history.
The end of the Demon Slayer IP movies didn't mean the popularity was going to fall off.
The opposite. The global ACGN world's valuation of the Demon Slayer IP climbed further, with the valuation of the Demon Slayer IP alone passing a staggering seven trillion yen.
The value of Demon Slayer's spin-off single-player games, mobile games, and character spin-off anime scheduled for the next two or three years saw a major boost. When those works go online, they will lift the Demon Slayer IP valuation and the sales of spin-off products on the market.
A giant work in the IP world like this was just one of many works under Shirogane Animation's control.
Setting aside the development of Demon Slayer's related IP for now.
There was the Hunter x Hunter Dark Continent arc anime still in preparation.
One-Punch Man Season 4.
The mobile game TFT Mobile and the PC game Teamfight Tactics derived from the League of Legends: Arcane animation.
There were also the mobile games derived from the currently popular Bleach, One Piece, and Naruto anime.
Beyond the project Shirogane Animation had already locked in with the Tokyo municipal government, the joint development of the demolition and reconstruction of the old residential houses near the Shirogane Animation headquarters, with plans to build the area into a new ACGN holy land for the next several decades.
Anyone with even a casual grasp of the ACGN industry understood how high the current value of Shirogane Animation sat.
Shirogane Animation ten or twenty years from now would grow into a heavier giant.
Launching this many IP development plans at the same time was taxing, even with Shirogane Animation having earned over a trillion yen in cash profit across the past decade.
But with Shirogane Animation's development prospects sitting where they did and the value of the company's IP works visible to anyone who cared to look, even without Rei going public for financing, the bank loan process for the development zone, paired with backing from the Tokyo municipal government, was all green lights with no obstacles.
April.
A news post titled "Shirogane Animation: A Global Animation Empire Is Rising in Tokyo" went viral across the country.
The article laid out Shirogane Animation's current situation and future direction with clarity.
If similar news had landed earlier, some Shirogane fans would have stepped out to disagree, and many ACGN industry peers and senior figures would have come out flexing their seniority.
This time.
Fans were mostly mocking it with a smile.
"Is this not the most obvious thing in the world? Do I need you to remind me that Shirogane Animation is going to grow into an animation empire?"
"The editor is just stating things everyone already knows. Being a news editor at this level is genuinely embarrassing."
"I really didn't know, though. Has Shirogane-sensei already grown into a high-level big capitalist?"
"A capitalist tycoon worth Hundreds of billions is still holding a signing event for the release of the first volume of the Naruto manga tankobon in Tokyo in two weeks. How's that for being approachable? You can get a signed manga from Shirogane-sensei for a couple thousand yen."
"I'm going to be a die-hard fan of Shirogane-sensei for the rest of my life."
"By the way, when is the demolition and reconstruction project near the Shirogane Animation headquarters, jointly undertaken by Shirogane-sensei and the Tokyo government, going to be done?"
"Don't doubt the strength of Japan's infrastructure mania. As long as the project funds reach the construction party on time and the money is in place, the machines and the workers don't rest, working in three shifts."
"The full reconstruction plan is expected to take about two or three years."
"Does Shirogane-sensei have enough money for a project like this?"
"The Tokyo government provides low-interest loans and policy tax reduction support. Building an ACGN holy land and a cultural tourism site there is also a political achievement. But all of it has to lean on Shirogane-sensei's personal IP to get off the ground. Otherwise there wouldn't be this many policy incentives."
"With the Big Three IPs backing Shirogane Animation's revenue, there's no worry about paying the money back."
"So in a few years, the area near Shirogane Animation's headquarters is going to be redone from the ground up?"
"Yeah. There should be a lot more ACGN malls, shops, restaurants, moe-element spots, and otaku culture businesses. Whether it can become a globally recognized new pilgrimage site for ACGN culture the way the Tokyo government is promoting it is hard to say. The odds should be reasonable. That's Shirogane after all."
"Kids these days are lucky. They have a stack of Shirogane-sensei's anime to watch from the moment they're born. Later on they can even visit the holy land at the Shirogane Animation headquarters in Tokyo. Unlike us, chasing weekly updates and suffering for it. Sigh."
"The luckiest one has to be Shirogane-sensei's daughter. With a rich dad like that, she'll be the little princess of Shirogane Animation. I'm so jealous. Is it possible that in the future, Shirogane-sensei makes whatever anime Hina wants to watch? Whoever she wants dead, he kills off?"
"What do you mean? Sakura, for instance. If Hina watches Naruto and finds Sakura annoying, could she have Shirogane-sensei kill off Sakura?"
"What a wild idea."
"Haha, I hope Sakura gets written off soon. She's in the way of Sasuke and Naruto's romance."
"?"
"Are you even human? What kind of plots are you fantasizing about while watching Naruto?"
"Fujoshi, get out of the Naruto forum. Hot-blooded shonen manga doesn't welcome people pushing BL. The Hunter x Hunter discussion circle was wrecked by you lot back then, and now you want to wreck Naruto?"
March ended. April arrived.
The second anniversary of the Bleach broadcast.
Rei took part in a variety show hosted by Tokyo Television for a Bleach-themed event.
The variety show's ratings ran higher than the Bleach anime's own.
Bleach's plot had moved into a new arc at this point.
Led by Grimmjow of the Espada, they invaded the human world, fought with Ichigo, and kidnapped Orihime Inoue.
With that, the Bleach plot opened a new arc, the Hueco Mundo arc.
For Naruto, the Chunin Exams arc wrapped.
Orochimaru, disguised as the Kazekage, had his true identity exposed.
Shikamaru bested Temari before forfeiting, Naruto defeated Neji, the peak duel between Sasuke and Gaara, and Sasuke had learned Chidori.
The currently airing plot was Naruto versus Gaara in his Tailed Beast form.
Thanks to the strength of this arc's execution, Naruto's viewership ratings held the top spot among the Big Three.
For One Piece, after entering the Arlong arc, the most exciting plot of the East Blue arc surfaced.
In One Piece as a work, the battles in earlier arcs leaned more on watching the plots of Luffy and Zoro, with the others playing more like supporting characters providing assistance.
After the Arlong arc, the plot started leaning into ensemble characterization.
Most of the protagonist's group would have their own corresponding opponent, which is one of the reasons why a single arc in One Piece can span over a hundred chapters.
Everyone knows that to make a plot rich, you should depict more of the side characters and move toward ensemble development. But how to shape that many side characters and then get the audience to pay a real amount of attention to each character's battle plot is not a simple matter.
At least from the start of the Bleach anime until now, the audience mostly cares about the battles of the protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki. They have little patience for the battles of Uryu Ishida, Yasutora Sado, and Orihime Inoue.
In the year or two since these three anime were born, in most cases, whether on popularity or ratings, they sat on the same level. But.
After each one passed through its early plot stages, the picture shifted.
Naruto took the lead in popularity, no question, thanks to the Chunin Exams and the clash between Konoha and Sunagakure.
One Piece followed close behind.
Bleach, though, even as the first to air and now into the Hueco Mundo arc, with the audience holding no real complaints about the Hueco Mundo arc.
A small gap had opened in its popularity against Naruto and One Piece.
On the character popularity lists compiled by ACGN websites across Japan, Ichigo's popularity was not lower than Luffy's or Naruto's.
If you scrolled down the list, though, you would find that outside the protagonists, among the other popular characters of the three anime, Bleach's supporting cast tended to land further down. Inside the top ten popular characters, Bleach only had Ichigo and Kenpachi Zaraki sitting in the top two spots.
Naruto and One Piece held four spots each.
In this Japan, the Big Three started going global the way they had in Rei's previous life, spreading fast through anime fan groups across every age band.
At the same time, the situation where Bleach sat as the perpetual third while Naruto and One Piece each had their moments of glory during serialization started to emerge.
"Different world, same situation." Rei sighed as he tracked the popularity trends of his works during this stretch.
The pattern had been expected.
Going forward, Naruto and One Piece would run neck and neck in the domestic Japan race.
In overseas markets, One Piece's popularity would lead over Naruto.
This time, though, even with the rankings of the three works close to those in his previous life.
Inside Japan, the influence of the three works would top what they had carried in his previous life.
The producing country of the three works is Japan, and the treatment in terms of promotion channels, intensity, and official support sat worlds apart from the natural spread on the internet in Rei's previous life.
Differences would surface in the final shape of the works' IP value.
At this stage, the Big Three were close to the day when titles like the Three Great Shonen would emerge in Japan.
The end of Demon Slayer worked like a kind of milestone, giving many anime fans a sense that the old era was passing and a new era was on the way.