I'm Not A Master, I'm A Director
Chapter 473: Don't Forget You're a Magus
Other than Joan of Arc and Napoleon, did France ever produce any other great heroes?
The answer is undoubtedly yes.
But if you asked someone outside France—especially someone not very familiar with French history—to name a third French hero besides those two, most people would probably be stumped.
Only after someone reminded them, "He's also a French hero," would they suddenly realize:
"Oh~ So this person is French too."
It could only be said that, despite being one of the five major powers, France wasn't exactly great at promoting its historical figures.
The members of the Young Magus Club had long since stopped wondering which French Heroic Spirits would appear. Their attention had been completely captured by the trailer for Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons.
"Hey, hey, Alice! Who are these two Heroic Spirits with horns? They're so cute! Are they dragon girls from Chinese mythology?"
"Uh..."
"And this black Jeanne looks so powerful! Why is she the enemy?"
"Mm..."
"Whoa, this scene is awesome! Lancelot and Siegfried are both in it! Looks like Shinji Matou hasn't forgotten about them."
"..."
Can you stop freaking out every two seconds?! Are you some kind of prank toy? You keep startling me and making me miss important frames!
Alice grumbled inwardly.
With Shinji's style of editing trailers, many crucial details were hidden in just a few frames. If you weren't watching with complete concentration, it was easy to miss important clues.
Alice knew the exact same trailer would be uploaded online afterward, where people could pause and analyze it frame by frame. But without knowing what to look for, it would be torture.
After all, as soon as the trailer dropped, the internet would be flooded with analysis videos and discussion posts.
Alice intended to discover some exclusive hidden detail before everyone else so she could show off online.
That made the first viewing incredibly important.
But what do you do when it feels like five hundred ducks are quacking in your ear?
A little while later—
"Alice, Alice! Why are there so many dragons?"
"The movie is literally called Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons. Of course there are dragons."
"..."
Aoko fell silent for a moment before asking, "So... why does it have to be dragons?"
"..."
A little later—
"There's—"
"Aoko, are you looking for a fight?"
Alice's patience with the "five hundred ducks" had finally reached its limit. Grabbing Aoko by the collar, she glared at her with a ferocious expression.
Aoko swallowed as she looked at the fireball burning in Alice's hand.
She had no doubt that if she answered, "Yes," Alice would throw it right in her face.
"I was just going to say that the final shot, where the army charges toward the dragon horde, was incredibly epic."
"It really was."
This time, Alice couldn't disagree.
The aerial shot in the trailer—showing humanity's army charging toward a sky filled with countless black dragons—was genuinely breathtaking.
Alice even felt that, in terms of depicting medieval warfare, it was probably as spectacular as it could possibly get.
As expected, Shinji Matou's films just have unmatched emotional impact!
As Shinji's die-hard fan, Alice mentally gave him an instant three-hit combo of likes, praise, and support.
Aoko, on the other hand, didn't idolize Shinji in the slightest.
That didn't stop her from having extremely high expectations for Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons.
After all, watching movies was like eating food.
Liking a cuisine didn't mean you had to like the chef who cooked it.
You appreciated the cooking, not necessarily the person.
As for why Aoko felt no attraction toward Shinji, perhaps it was because Touko was always complaining to her about all the reckless things Shinji Matou did.
Idol worship required a certain distance.
Get too close, and you inevitably started seeing their flaws.
In any case, Aoko thought it was completely unrealistic for her to idolize someone who got strung up on the film set by his own Servants.
Still, after the trailer ended, she discussed the movie's possible plot with her friends.
Alice wasn't participating—she was already furiously battling other fans online with her keyboard.
"Shibamatsu, what do you think will happen to the Jeanne in the movie? She looks incredibly strong in the trailer. Do you think she'll end up joining Chaldea?"
"How would I know?" Shibamatsu muttered under his breath. He wasn't the filmmaker, after all. Still, based on what he'd seen in the trailer, he offered a guess.
"She'll probably return to the Throne of Heroes like Jeanne Alter did."
Movie trailers usually avoid spoilers by introducing only the setting or the opening of the story while keeping the middle of the plot deliberately vague.
But Shinji hadn't done that with Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons. Instead, he'd cut the movie's main storyline directly into the trailer.
The reason was simple.
The core plot of Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons was so straightforward that it could be summed up in a single sentence:
Gilles uses the Holy Grail to summon Jeanne Alter and other Heroic Spirits, then wages war against the Heroic Spirits led by Chaldea.
Since there was no point in hiding such a simple premise, Shinji simply revealed the story's backbone while showcasing exciting highlights from throughout the film to keep audiences looking forward to it.
His approach was much like that of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Western audiences already knew the basic storyline, so the trailers attracted viewers with spectacular large-scale battles, selling the films as epic cinematic experiences.
Of course, that wasn't the only thing Shinji borrowed from The Lord of the Rings.
Many of the film's battle sequences—the cinematography, camera movements, and editing—were also inspired by Peter Jackson's trilogy.
It couldn't be helped.
Dragons.
Knights.
Medieval Europe.
Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons incorporated virtually every classic element of Western fantasy.
And when it came to epic fantasy films, The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a monument that simply couldn't be ignored.
No matter how you felt about it, you couldn't deny its place in cinema history.
Fortunately for Shinji, people in this world had never seen The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
No matter how he filmed Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons, nobody would compare it to those classics.
In fact, because audiences had never seen them, they would probably lavish praise on Shinji's battle scenes instead—even though Shinji himself felt he was merely copying someone else's homework.
When the audience had little basis for comparison, even faithfully imitating such battle sequences became incredibly impressive.
One could even say that Shinji had revealed the movie's greatest selling point right there in the trailer without holding anything back.
Even someone as dense as Aoko could see that.
"This movie, Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons, is all about war. Shinji Matou has been shouting 'war, war' for years... and now he's finally filming an actual war."
In Aoko's opinion, the previous Holy Grail Wars had certainly been exciting, but calling them "wars" was an exaggeration beyond exaggeration.
After all, there were probably more people involved in a village brawl than in an entire Holy Grail War.
"...A war, huh..."
Fujita looked worried.
"Can Shinji Matou really pull it off?"
Shinji might be the reigning king of commercial cinema, but large-scale war scenes were notoriously difficult to film.
To say nothing of everything else, simply coordinating an enormous number of extras was already a monumental challenge.
These days, plenty of keyboard warriors fancied themselves military geniuses, always claiming wars should have been fought this way or that, insisting that historical commanders were idiots for failing to do the obvious.
What they didn't realize was that many of them couldn't even organize a ten-player raid in an online game without everything descending into chaos.
Did Shinji Matou really have the ability to coordinate that many people?
The mass charge shown in the trailer certainly looked impressive, but trailers could be deceptive.
"Fujita," Aoko said with a grin as she slapped the chubby man on the shoulder, "you're worrying over nothing."
"You forgot something."
"You and Shinji Matou are magi."
"Why are you worrying about problems ordinary people have?"
"...F***!!"
Realizing how foolish he'd been, Fujita couldn't help swearing.
'Thank goodness I kept my mouth shut.'
Shibamatsu silently breathed a sigh of relief.
He'd been thinking exactly the same thing.
He just hadn't said it out loud.
'How could I forget that we're magi? I really shouldn't have overlooked something so obvious! But if Shinji Matou is using magecraft to solve these problems, then the large-scale war scenes must be fine. And if the movie really has battles on such a grand scale, it'll definitely be incredibly appealing.'
Shibamatsu felt that Hundred Years' War of Evil Dragons was practically guaranteed to succeed.
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Unlike an ordinary fan like Shibamatsu, a company president like Cloris trusted only the numbers in reports.
No matter how capable she was, she still had to answer to the board of directors.
Television ratings for trailers were full of variables, so what she cared about instead were the view counts across various platforms.
Especially on the core gathering place for Type-Moon fans—their own streaming platform.
The paying subscribers there were people who spent money on Type-Moon every single month. Before Fate/Grand Order—the legendary money-printing machine—came along, paying for the streaming service was practically proof of how devoted a Type-Moon fan you were.
Not to mention that even the stingiest fans had accounts there.
After all, movie trailers were available for all registered users.
On the day after the trailer's release, Cloris received the backend analytics report.
"Seven-point-six million views in the first twenty-four hours... and a peak concurrent audience of eight hundred and sixty thousand..."
"Not bad!"
Although the numbers were nowhere near the spectacular "eighty million views in ten hours" phenomenon, Cloris was already delighted.
Especially since these figures came only from their own streaming platform.
If the entire internet were counted, the performance would surely be even more impressive.
"Still," Cloris said, tapping the report with a smile, "we've only been aggressively promoting the streaming service for such a short time, and it's already attracting this much traffic."
"Shinji made the right move again."
"He really never seems to make a wrong decision."
"Actually, ma'am," her secretary said, "our streaming platform's user retention rate is unusually high."
"Hm? Why is that?"
Cloris blinked in surprise.
The secretary replied, "The users say that after getting used to Type-Moon's video site, every other video platform feels like garbage."
"They say the others are completely anti-user."
"..."
A question mark slowly appeared over Cloris's head.
She had absolutely no idea what that meant.