Among all the works Sora had pulled out so far, Arcane had one very obvious drawback.
It was far too expensive to produce.
In Sora's previous life, that animation, despite having only nine episodes, had cost somewhere around fifteen billion yen to make. Of course, each episode ran for roughly forty minutes, which meant that, in terms of actual length, those nine episodes were equivalent to more than a standard TV anime cour. Even so, the budget was still outrageous.
There was, however, an important difference. In that other world, the production had been led mainly by developed countries, where every stage came with a staggering price tag: labor, taxes, licenses, software, technical development, specialized tools… everything had been inflated to an almost suffocating degree.
Japan in this world was different. With a complete industrial chain, an extremely mature anime market, and a network of studios, subcontractors, and suppliers spread across multiple regions, costs could be controlled far more efficiently. Licensing, software development, and specialized technical teams were still expensive, but they were nowhere near the levels seen in that other environment.
If Sora wanted to produce Arcane at the same level - or even at a higher one - within the current structure of Yume Animation, he believed it would be possible to keep the cost around six billion yen.
But an animation of this scale could not rely solely on the Japanese market to recover its investment. Its battlefield would have to be global. It would need to negotiate distribution and broadcasting across major countries, enter international platforms, deal with national networks, regional stations, and affiliates, while also funding a far more aggressive promotional campaign than anything the company had ever attempted before.
Once production and marketing were added together, even for Sora, who was now far from poor, it was not a small amount of money.
So, what should he choose?
After all, this world did not have League of Legends.
Without the initial traffic brought by the game's existing fanbase, could Arcane still explode in popularity the way it had in his previous life?
That doubt passed through Sora's mind for only a single second.
Then he already had his answer.
In his judgment, even without the original game as support, the quality of Arcane as an animation was strong enough to turn it into a phenomenon. There was no concrete proof behind that belief. It was simply the intuition he had built over many years as an anime fan, that almost instinctive ability to recognize when a work possessed something special.
And Sora always chose to trust his own judgment.
Once the decision was made, he stopped hesitating. He opened the system and began looking through all the information related to the production of Arcane.
In early March, Your Name was still showing impressive staying power at the Japanese box office.
But once the middle of the month arrived and new films began premiering one after another, its daily ranking gradually slipped.
Even so, a total box office that had already exceeded sixty-four billion yen was still enough to shake the entire Japanese animation industry.
Sora's name was already large enough. But fame was not exactly the same thing as professional recognition, and professional recognition alone was not the same as true standing within the industry.
Over the past two years, however, he had advanced on three fronts at once: TV anime, live-action drama, and film. That simultaneous rise slowly turned the doubts of his detractors into a joke.
It was similar to what had happened to Makoto Shinkai before the release of Your Name in his previous life. Back then, Shinkai had been seen by many as a second-tier Kantoku in Japan. People mocked his works as hollow, beautiful only in visuals, but weak in storytelling.
After Your Name, however, his position in the industry surpassed that of countless veterans, placing him below only historic names like Hayao Miyazaki and a few other Kantokus of similar weight.
In the same way, within the Japanese audiovisual and animation industry of this world, Sora's position in the hearts of professionals began to rise violently that spring.
After the New Year period passed, every active project inside Yume Animation had been reduced to a single anime: Attack on Titan.
Aside from the staff in the IP development and operations department, who were studying the possibility of turning Sora's previous works into manga, games, and derivative products, more than half of the employees in the animation production division had almost no real work to do.
At any other company, getting paid to sit around would have been a dream.
At Yume Animation, however, things were completely different.
Any employee who had stayed there for more than a year knew very well that, although the company's salaries were already more than double the industry average for equivalent positions, the fixed salary still made up only the smaller part of their annual income.
What truly made a difference were the project bonuses.
Every year, after each anime was completed, the bonuses they received were at least three times higher than their base salary.
In other words, only receiving a salary without taking part in an important project meant watching their income drop by more than half.
Because of that, even while playing online games in the office, occasionally helping the Attack on Titan production team with minor tasks, and spending the rest of the day chatting about industry gossip, the employees could not truly relax. Idleness had a bitter taste. The calmer their days seemed, the more anxious they became.
"When do you think Kantoku Sora's new work will appear? Your Name is almost out of theaters, and Attack on Titan will premiere in less than half a month. Staying idle like this isn't a solution either."
"No idea. To be honest, Kantoku Sora's creative speed is already ridiculous enough. That old pace of releasing several animations a year was never normal in the first place."
"But the company has so many people now. If Kantoku Sora's creation speed slows down, are we going to start taking on adaptations of manga, light novels, or games from other companies?"
"Hard to say. That's a decision for the higher-ups. Those of us at the bottom shouldn't make wild guesses. Anyway, the company is still in an expansion phase. Layoffs don't seem likely."
"We got used to being busy, making all those interesting animations from Kantoku Sora. Now that we finally have this rare period of light work, I'm actually having trouble adjusting."
While the employees were discussing Sora at their desks, in the meeting room next door, dozens of mid- and high-level members of Yume Animation were gathered.
And the meeting, in essence, consisted of Sora speaking while everyone else listened.
In the entire company, aside from Yumi and Sumire, who had already received a rough idea from Sora beforehand, no one knew exactly what would be announced.
When Sora presented his intention to produce the second season of Attack on Titan, no one was surprised.
Almost everyone present had already read the script for the first season. They all understood that the story was still far from over. A second season was only natural.
But when Sora announced that, from this point forward, the company would devote most of its energy to producing a completely new work called Arcane, the expressions around the table began to change.
First came confusion.
Then came excitement that was difficult to hide.
"Regarding Attack on Titan, our company's focus should not be limited to the Japanese market," Sora said, looking around the room. "For overseas broadcasting, influence expansion, and promotional campaigns in other countries, we need to invest more money and more effort than we have in any previous work."
He paused briefly before continuing.
"Yume Animation should not remain a company whose influence reaches only Japan."
The eyes in the room grew sharper.
"As for Arcane…" Sora rested his hands on the table. "It will be the animation with the longest production cycle since the founding of this company. It will also be our largest investment to date. And it will be the work that makes the name Yume Animation echo throughout the world."
The moment those words fell, the atmosphere in the meeting room heated up.
If anyone else in Japan had said something like that in a meeting, they would probably have been met with ridicule.
What was that supposed to mean?
Was the global market your backyard?
You say you are going to open the international market, and it simply opens for you?
You say you want to become known throughout the world, and the whole world simply starts knowing you?
At that rate, anyone could claim they planned to open a company branch on the moon.
Talking big was easy.
But when the person saying those words was Sora, the meaning changed completely.
Sora never boasted.
Or rather, the things he boasted about eventually became reality.
That conviction was already deeply rooted in the hearts of Yume Animation's employees.
It was confidence built by works like Re:Zero, Steins;Gate, and many others that had exceeded expectations one after another.
And now, their own boss was saying that his new animation, Arcane, would be the company's largest investment and would become a worldwide hit.
With his vision and talent, would he say something like that without reason?
Impossible.
This new work called Arcane definitely had something special. Only that could explain such confidence.
And at that moment, a new question appeared in everyone's mind.
How could they get into the production team for Arcane?
Inside the room, dozens of managers and department leaders began looking at one another. The excitement was still there, but something new had mixed into it.
Competition.
Sora observed the atmosphere and seemed rather satisfied.
"Both Arcane and the second season of Attack on Titan already have completed scripts," he said. "The production teams for both new projects will begin being officially formed and launched within half a month."
Everyone present held their breath.
"As for the budgets of the two works…" Sora's gaze swept across the room. "The second season of Attack on Titan will have twelve episodes, with an investment of approximately one billion nine hundred million yen."
That amount, while enormous, was still something everyone could accept.
But Sora was not finished.
"Arcane, on the other hand, will have nine episodes. Based on my estimate, the minimum investment will exceed six billion yen. That figure does not include promotional costs."
When those words were spoken, it was not only the managers and executives in the room who froze.
Even Sumire and Yumi, seated to Sora's left and right, were completely stunned.
An investment of nearly two billion yen in the second season of Attack on Titan was understandable.
Ever since Re:Zero, the company's accounts had become increasingly solid. Now, even without counting Your Name's box office share, which was approaching twenty billion yen, or the Blu-ray and merchandise revenue from the second season of AD, which had yet to be fully settled, Yume Animation already had more than twenty billion yen in liquid capital.
That was why Sora's heavy investment in Attack on Titan fell within everyone's expectations.
But Arcane…
Six billion?
What kind of absurdity was that?
Spending six billion yen to produce a nine-episode animation?
Even burning money had its limits.
Sora saw everyone's expressions and understood exactly what they were thinking.
But the truth was that an animation in the style of Arcane naturally demanded terrifying costs.
At first glance, it seemed to have an aesthetic close to 3D, but at its core, it still relied heavily on a 2D artistic finish, with an almost painterly visual language. The level of detail in every key frame, the difficulty of the drawings, the composition of the scenes, and the aesthetic requirements were on an entirely different level compared to modern everyday works like Steins;Gate.
On top of that, it contained a large amount of visual effects and modeling worthy of top-tier cinema. Those elements, by their very nature, were black holes for money.
But that was precisely the greatest advantage of a private company like Yume Animation.
When Sora called a meeting, he was informing everyone present of his decision.
He was not asking for permission.
If this were a publicly listed company, any CEO who tried to invest several billion yen into an animation of only nine episodes would probably be overthrown by shareholders before he could even finish speaking.
Sumire and Yumi were also shareholders, but Sora had always distributed generous dividends to them. He had never treated them unfairly in that regard. The two of them were already wealthy young women, and the money they had invested in the company at the beginning had long since returned many, many times over.
Because of that, they also did not try to interfere in the company's operations.
Of course, even if they wanted to interfere, they would not be able to. Their shareholding ratio was simply too low.
The meeting lasted less than an hour.
When it ended and the group of managers returned to their posts, the news that Sora had two new works about to enter production spread to every employee in the company in less than half a day.
In the days that followed, those rumors also reached the ears of well-informed professionals in the animation industry.
And soon after, they began spreading among Sora's fans.
patre0n ImmortalEmperor