After Demon Slayer wrapped its theatrical run, Rei's workload at the company began to drop.
At a stretch like this, his restless mind started to wander.
The Big Three anime were running on schedule, and Japan's anime fans, unsure when these three series would conclude, had grown used to their presence.
A lot of the time, anime fans follow a series for the sake of company and habit.
Switching on the TV at a fixed time to find a familiar series updated, when that habit fits into one's life, the concept of long-running battle shonen begins to ferment and spread through the fan base, even with the names different.
"Bleach has been on air for two full years, Naruto for a year and a half, and One Piece for one full year by now."
Rei looked at the recent reports on his various works at the company, doing his own calculations in his head.
It was certain that these three works were still a long way from peak popularity, but they had become three of the most popular and discussed anime in the global industry.
In Japan itself, the Big Three had no rivals.
Outside the country, the three anime were still competing with original anime from other nations on their local turf.
"I don't need to handle the micro-promotions behind the scenes anymore."
Rei let out a long breath, relief in his chest.
The three works had entered steady-state serialization, and their influence and momentum inside Japan had already passed what they had carried in his previous life.
With the three anime joined up together, capturing the overseas market was a matter of time.
The fan wars between the three series were getting more severe, but in a way, their bickering was a kind of spontaneous, disguised promotion by the fans.
As long as the atmosphere and intensity of these fan debates stayed inside a reasonable range.
The people who loved to argue all day about which anime was the best or which character was the strongest were free IP promotion machines. The more, the better.
So once the three anime hit stable serialization, Rei's work focus began to shift to the other anime being created by the company.
"In July, over a month from now, the Steins;Gate anime premieres." Rei fell into thought as he looked at the company's schedule.
He could see ahead that once Steins;Gate started airing, plenty of haters would jump out and bash the work as boring or claim they couldn't follow the plot.
But the current Rei was past the level where that kind of petty noise could affect him.
As long as Rei didn't adapt high-popularity anime like the Big Three in a row into endings even more nonsensical than Jujutsu Kaisen's, even if he flopped ten times in a row with mid-to-short-length anime like Steins;Gate, it wouldn't shake his standing in the industry.
Hayao Miyazaki had anime films with poor reviews too. Did that move his standing in the Japanese industry?
Rei's current standing in Japan ran further than that.
If he did create a work with a poor reputation, there would be a lot of backlash while the work was airing.
After the series finished, though, everyone would still be waiting on Rei's next work.
Rei's mindset for creating new works in Japan was different now.
Before, he would worry that works from his previous life might not translate cleanly to the Japan dimension, and he would agonize over whether to delete or add scenes to fit the aesthetics of the Japanese anime circle.
Now.
The Steins;Gate anime would be adapted without changing a single word.
Not only would the anime plot stay unchanged, he would also fold in many scenes from the original game that hadn't been captured in the previous life's anime.
The first season's plot would match the previous life, still a half-year series, but with the added game content, the entire anime would be easier for the audience to understand on its setting once they watched.
The average episode length would be over 28 minutes, and some key episodes might exceed 35 minutes.
There were several other anime projects like Steins;Gate inside Illumination Animation.
The production of the Big Three was the cornerstone of the company. On top of that foundation, the Clannad animation had been greenlit for production, set to premiere next July.
The Gundam series had also been approved at the meeting stage. The company was hiring a new production team to launch the project in October, with a premiere set for the end of next year.
Then there was Jujutsu Kaisen.
In the Japanese manga world of Rei's previous life, after the Big Three, the phenomenal anime in the Japanese region were works like Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, and Jujutsu Kaisen.
Jujutsu Kaisen wasn't long, so Rei didn't feel much pressure creating it. He could change the ending however he wanted to make it satisfying. Rei was confident in the adaptation of Jujutsu Kaisen. By following the ending plot many online fans in his previous life had imagined for the Japan version, even if the final result was bad, it couldn't be worse than the original.
He expected that while handling the Big Three and various company matters, he could finish all the anime storyboards for Jujutsu Kaisen and hand them over to the company by year-end.
Before any of the Big Three concluded, Rei would not add any more ultra-long-running anime produced by his company to the market.
For these mid-to-short-length works, though, if Rei was interested in one, he would draw the storyboards for the entire series at once and hand them to Illumination Animation and its production departments for his subordinates to start production.
His aim was to release two to three mid-to-short-length anime works, like Madoka Magica, Fate, and Steins;Gate, every year, alongside maintaining the Big Three's serialization.
While the three long-running battle shonen were masterpieces with maximum commercial value, plenty of short masterpieces in the Japanese region of Rei's previous life had reputations that exceeded the Big Three, and Rei wasn't going to leave them alone.
"I'm begging you, the sun is out today, go outside and play."
A woman's voice rang out.
Rei and his wife Miyu were both working in the same study inside their home villa.
In the hundred-square-meter study, beyond the two of them busy with their respective works, their daughter Hina was playing various games inside a baby play area set up in a corner of the room.
Miyu's attention wasn't on the daughter today.
She had noticed something off with Rei a while ago.
In Rei's previous life, the word was that Gege Akutami needed only one working day to think up the plot and draw the storyboards. The rest of the week was spent drawing the manga manuscript off those storyboards.
That speed on storyboards was considered fast among mangakas.
Rei's process was simpler. He created the storyboards for the Big Three by reconstructing them from the mature original manuscripts and visuals of the source material, and then handed his rough storyboards to his staff to be turned into animation episodes. They were also used to create the serialized manga of the same name in Dream Comic.
Because Rei had too many works stored in his head, in order not to waste time on long serializations, the Big Three manga serialized in Japan were all expanded versions, with each chapter at least forty pages long.
So it took him a day and a half to reconstruct the storyboards for those three chapters. The rest of his time was spent personally drawing key manuscript frames for the three manga, and whatever time was left went to the affairs of Shirogane Animation and Illumination Animation.
In Miyu's eyes, this work schedule was already absurd. Over a hundred pages of manga storyboards to plot every week, plus a pile of company business to handle. You couldn't find another mangaka with output like his in Japan.
The past few days, though, with company business dropping off, Rei had even started drawing storyboards for new anime works, and she could not stand it.
"An overachiever like you puts a lot of pressure on me. Today, I worked with six manga assistants to finish five pages of manga manuscript, and I was feeling great about myself, planning to reward myself with my favorite milk candy pudding. Then I see you." Miyu rambled at Rei's side.
"You're already plenty productive, and you've earned plenty of money in Japan. Last week, it looked like you'd just finished the storyboards for the first three episodes of something called Madoka, put them in the safe, and left them there. What is it this week? Millennium Actress? What on earth is that? Are you even human?"
"Oh, Millennium Actress. It's an animated film with a touch of artistic feel that I quite like. I happened to have nothing to do today, so I'm drawing its storyboards," Rei said to his wife with a smile.
"I'm begging you, stop grinding the rest of us mortals into the dirt. Can the work concepts in your head really be this numerous? Let's go. Take the daughter out for some fun."
Miyu's mindset right now was complicated. She wanted to slack off and be a "slacker," but seeing her excellent husband running this productive and hardworking, she would feel guilty the moment she went off to play on her own.
Her current plan was to "corrupt" Rei's career ambition and turn him into more of a slacker.
"All right, let's go. Where do you want to head today? I'll come with you," Rei laughed as he put down his pen and placed the 17 pages of Millennium Actress storyboards he had just finished into the combination safe nearby. "It was a whim. Since you say so, I'll pick it up again in a few months."
"And tomorrow?" Miyu looked at Rei.
"Tomorrow? We'll see tomorrow." Rei's voice came out low.
Miyu felt a tightness in her chest at that.
"By the way, in that safe of yours, how many new storyboards do you have where you've drawn only the beginning and haven't finished the whole thing?"
"Six or seven," Rei said after a pause. "I draw them when I have time. Once one is finished without disturbing the Big Three serialization, I take it to the company and start the project."
"Six. Six or seven." Miyu was silent for a long stretch before she spoke. "If I hadn't known you for years and known you were an Earthling, I'd actually want to take you to a lab and dissect you to see if your brain is an alien's."
"Genuine freak."
Miyu's teasing of Rei didn't end until he drove to an anime convention being held near their home.
Wearing masks and leaving the daughter with the nanny, the two stepped into the venue. A dazzling array of cosplayers met them right at the entrance.
Sai, Gon, Killua, Saitama, Eren, Naruto, Sasuke, Ichigo.
You could say that out of every ten cosplayers in the venue, at least seven were cosplaying characters from Shirogane Animation works.
In a prominent spot at the convention, a huge poster promoted the information that the Steins;Gate animation would premiere on July 3rd.
These were premiere promotions paid for by Illumination Animation. Not only at this convention, but at every similar venue with some popularity across the country, similar Steins;Gate promotions had gone up recently.
"It feels like I've stepped into your kingdom. The whole venue is filled with thematic elements from your works," Miyu said with a sour edge.
"Look, honey, that cosplayer over there is cosplaying Reika, the female lead from the manga Reincarnation."
Rei changed the subject, pointing ahead.
Miyu craned her neck and stood on tiptoe to look.
Rei put his hands under her arms and lifted her above his head so she could see past the crowd in front.
"Do you see her?"
"It's only a few people. After all, Reincarnation is the fourth-ranked manga on Dream Comic, and there are this few people cosplaying it at the convention." Miyu said it like that, but the smile she couldn't hide at the corners of her mouth gave her away.
It really hadn't been easy.
With the Big Three this popular in Japan, and Rei's other works still pulling residual heat, her work still had followers.
Once her mood lifted, Miyu felt like asking Rei for information about Steins;Gate, set to premiere in over a month.
"How's the work that's about to premiere? Is it good?"
"Well." Rei thought for a moment and looked at Miyu. "The early plot is heavy and the pacing is slow."
"You'd like this kind of work, though, Miyu."
"It is a masterpiece, absolutely."
"Another masterpiece," Miyu said.
"This time is the same as before. No exaggeration."
"As long as you can sit through the boring but important setup in the early part of this anime, when you see the end, you'll be shocked by how cleverly it's built," Rei said.
"Is it really that good?" Miyu asked back.
Rei smiled and didn't reply, but everything he wanted to express had been said.
This was the couple's daily life.
Caring for the kid, working, then bickering with each other in a repeating loop.
Other couples might find that kind of repetition dull fast.
Rei and Miyu enjoyed it.
How could anyone grow tired of working in an industry they love and doing things they enjoy?
During this year's spring season, Shirogane Animation and Illumination Animation, Rei included, didn't have much information or news circulating in the market.
Once July rolled in, though.
The headlines of major anime media in Japan shifted from Big Three information to the sci-fi anime Steins;Gate.
The reason was simple.
Unlike works like Higurashi: When They Cry and Summer Time Rendering, where Rei only took part in the creation at the scriptwriting level.
For the Steins;Gate animation, Rei's name could be seen in many slots, the character design supervisor and music composition columns among them.
Japan's ACGN fans understood it well.
Not every work from Shirogane was a masterpiece.
Higurashi: When They Cry, for example. The plot was decent, and overall it could only be called a good work.
For past works, though, as long as Rei was involved across multiple roles, the final results were, without exception, very good, and their reputations sat off the charts.
Even for works like the Big Three, Rei now handed the production to a group of his subordinates.
For Steins;Gate, Rei held this many roles himself.
Going by past experience, the phrase "Masterpiece in the Making" had already begun to surface across the Japanese fan base.
With the Big Three as a viewing habit for many Japanese anime fans, the fans also wanted something fresh.
They weren't necessarily looking for a masterpiece to surpass the Big Three.
It was that everyone began to develop genuine interest in other genres of anime.
In the first week of July, after Episode 1 of Steins;Gate premiered.
Question marks appeared in the heads of a slice of the Japanese anime fanbase.
This first episode of the anime was full of sincerity. The production quality and the visuals were maxed out.
So why couldn't they follow the plot?