In Attack on Titan, popular characters like Mikasa, Erwin, and Levi arrived at their peak from the moment they debuted. The cool factor was immediate and total. A substantial portion of the fan base was won over in their first scenes.
Compared to these characters, Eren in the early stages genuinely lacked that same immediate charm. He had not grown into himself yet. His appeal was not front-loaded.
But Eren's character was designed to release its depth gradually. Through each internal crisis, each forced choice, each moment of failure followed by the work of understanding it, the character accumulated something.
By the middle of the story his presence was not inferior to any of those early popular figures. The growth was real and it was earned.
Just: do not look at the final arc.
The world-ending plot of the final arc was not the problem in itself. Audiences had seen every category of protagonist across decades of watching anime.
Destroying the world to save one's homeland and family was not a concept that required much explanation. Asked to evaluate it from outside, an audience would call it immoral.
Asked to make the same choice from inside Eren's position, most of them would move faster than he did. The emotional logic was comprehensible.
The execution in the original had been the issue. Rei had addressed this in this Japan version's script. The later stages would not produce the same controversies.
Eren being criticised by fans at this point in the series was well within what Rei had expected. His attention was on the script revisions for the later material. He did not intend Attack on Titan to run for three to five years. The plan was to air the complete series from first episode to conclusion in a single sustained run.
The royal government arc in the middle section, which had been criticised extensively in his previous life for political plotting that felt juvenile and a protagonist who spent much of it crying and screaming about wanting to die, would be compressed.
The genuinely boring sections removed. The overall pacing of that arc accelerated past the points that had most tested the original audience's patience.
August passed under these circumstances.
September arrived.
Your Name completed its domestic theatrical run at the end of August. Final domestic box office: 64 billion yen. International total: 30 billion yen. A result that required no qualification.
September 2nd. The Your Name anime Blu-ray bundled with The Garden of Words anime, and the Your Name manga tankōbon bundled with The Garden of Words manga volume, were releasing on September 3rd.
This timing coincided with the Attack on Titan plot reaching the point where the Female Titan had been defeated and the Survey Corps, carrying their losses, returned behind the walls in silence. The convergence of both topics immediately directed the Japanese anime community's collective attention.
"The Your Name manga tankōbon apparently contains material not in the film."
"Shirogane-sensei confirmed in an interview that the manga includes storyboard sequences of Mitsuha and Taki's reunion after the staircase scene."
"So the manga has more content than the theatrical version?"
"Theatrical releases have duration constraints. Whether a film runs ninety minutes or two hours significantly affects how many screenings a cinema can schedule per day. Directors frequently cut material before release that then gets restored in other formats. Your Name is reasonably coherent but certain details are compressed. The manga will supplement these."
"The Attack on Titan manga has considerably more detail than the anime. This is why so many people buy Dream Comic the day after a new episode airs."
"I cannot wait until tomorrow. I genuinely cannot."
"Shirogane-sensei negotiated the merchandise arrangements with manufacturers before the film even released. This is why everything hits the market this quickly.
Other animation companies wait to confirm a work's popularity before contacting manufacturers. The delay can run to six months. Shirogane-sensei's works do not have sales uncertainty, so production starts early."
"The Garden of Words is what I am most curious about. The internal screening drew a trending topic. Shirogane-sensei said in an interview that despite being a companion piece, its quality in his own estimation is not inferior to Your Name. An anime short that meets that standard: what does it actually look like."
"That is probably a marketing statement. If it genuinely matched Your Name's quality there would be no reason to give it away bundled with the Blu-ray. It would have been expanded and released theatrically."
"We find out tomorrow morning. Arguing about it tonight changes nothing."
Through the night, Japan's major anime forums were running continuous discussion threads about the Your Name and The Garden of Words releases.
6:30 AM.
Keiko Yamada's alarm pulled her out of sleep.
She had set it herself and she still resented it.
If she had slept until noon the opportunity would have been gone. She knew this. She got up anyway.
Outside the window the sky was not yet fully bright. She was already moving with urgency.
She lived in a coastal first-tier city with a very high density of anime fans. Being an early riser gave her an advantage. Whether that advantage was sufficient was another question.
A little past seven she arrived at the anime merchandise street on a shared bike.
The promotional posters lining every surface of the street had been replaced entirely with Your Name and The Garden of Words bundled release material. In front of every shop that had not yet opened, the lines had already formed.
Keiko looked at this and produced a sound that was not quite a laugh.
These people do not sleep.
While waiting in front of one shop for the owner to arrive, she looked along the line at the cosplayers who had come in full costume at this hour of the morning. There was apparently an anime convention nearby today. These people would buy their merchandise and go directly from here to the venue.
The morning sun came up. The lines extended further. The street became louder.
A cluster of teenagers nearby were complaining loudly about the latest Attack on Titan episode having too little Eren presence. Keiko said nothing and watched the surrounding scene instead. It was entertaining enough on its own.
Eight o'clock arrived. The shop owners, woken by the sustained ringing of regular customers' phones, appeared bleary-eyed and began opening their doors. Keiko moved with the crowd into the shop.
The goal was obvious: the bundled Your Name and The Garden of Words Blu-ray and the Your Name and The Garden of Words manga tankōbon on the central shelves.
The manga tankōbon was manageable. The bundled three-volume set was priced at 860 yen, not excessive by any reasonable standard.
The Blu-ray was more complicated.
The top tier was the 4K Ultra HD Deluxe Edition. Two anime plot discs, a setting book exceeding a hundred pages, character stickers, bonus discs containing behind-the-scenes footage from both productions, scrapped footage, and a lossless audio disc of the complete music collections. The price reflected all of this accordingly: around 11,000 yen.
The Special Edition below it contained the discs, some bonus material, and a condensed setting book of several dozen pages: approximately 7,960 yen.
The Standard Blu-ray and the Standard disc differed only in image quality. On a small monitor the difference was minor. Projected onto a screen the gap was visible. 5,960 yen and 3,960 yen respectively.
By industry standards these prices were normal. With The Garden of Words included as a bonus across every edition, they were arguably underpriced.
For Keiko, it still stung slightly.
She bought the Deluxe Edition regardless. She had watched Your Name multiple times during the theatrical run and spent nearly 6,000 yen on cinema tickets across those viewings. The Blu-ray cost felt more acceptable measured against that context.
She also picked up the manga tankōbon set.
That way she could watch and read side by side.
Leaving the commercial street with her purchases, she looked back at the extending lines outside the shops with an expression that she was not going to describe as gloating.
That is what sleeping in costs you.
Based on the visible stock levels, a meaningful proportion of the people still in those lines were going home empty-handed today.
..
STONES PLZZ
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