In April, the temperature began to rise. Across the streets of Tokushima, girls had already traded their heavy coats for light skirts and short-sleeved shirts, and the city air carried that unmistakable feeling of a new season beginning.
Until the day before, the main otaku shopping streets were still covered in posters for Kimi no Na wa., Clannad, and Steins;Gate. Mitsuha Miyamizu, Nagisa Furukawa, and Kurisu Makise filled storefronts, walls, and shop entrances as if they owned those blocks.
One only had to step into any merchandise store to find entire shelves taken over by figures, posters, cosplay outfits, and all kinds of licensed goods related to those works. For weeks, they had been the absolute center of attention.
But today, everything changed.
The old posters were taken down almost all at once and replaced with promotional images for Shingeki no Kyojin. On every corner, posters appeared showing giant humanoid monsters with exposed muscles, grotesque bodies, and distorted faces - some so bizarre that they looked both terrifying and absurdly ridiculous.
After all, that very night, the first episode of Shingeki no Kyojin would officially premiere.
The winter season had still had the film Kimi no Na wa., which had kept Japanese anime fans from falling into a true drought. But in the end, a film was still only a film. No matter how memorable it was, its length was limited.
Now, they would finally have a new weekly series to follow.
Even during the day, four of the top ten search trends on NatsuYume were already related to Shingeki no Kyojin. Among the platform's most-watched original videos, many were analysis pieces made by creators using the released trailers to dissect the world, the rules, and the possible direction of this new anime.
Naturally, the most popular video belonged to Yumi.
At present, she was the biggest creator on NatsuYume, a massive influencer with more than twenty-nine million followers. And there was a very simple reason her video had exploded far beyond everyone else's.
Other creators, no matter how professional they were, could only speculate.
Yumi was different. She was the second-largest shareholder of Yume Animation. While ordinary viewers were waiting for nightfall to watch the premiere, she had probably already seen the finished episode a week earlier.
In her video, Yumi did not reveal any spoilers. Even so, at the end, she emphasized with rare seriousness that Shingeki no Kyojin was "a shocking masterpiece, with a world and story far beyond anything the audience could imagine."
At first glance, it did not seem as if she had said much.
But to the fans, that was already enough.
In the comment section of the official Shingeki no Kyojin account, crowds of people began discussing it nonstop.
"So this anime leans more toward worldbuilding and setting?"
"After finishing Clannad and Steins;Gate, I honestly feel like it's impossible for another anime to shock me even more."
"Another masterpiece? After Clannad, I don't think just any anime can deserve that title. Even Yumi is doing this kind of marketing now?"
"You can doubt yourselves all you want, but you can't doubt Kantoku Sora's ability."
"From the trailer, it looks like a bunch of people flying around with cables to cut down giants. So the main story is basically killing titans?"
"I also think it feels a little strange. An anime about cutting down giants apparently already has a second season planned. Are there really that many giants to cut?"
"Who said there's a second season?"
"A lot of people in the anime industry have said it. The first season premieres tonight, but Kantoku Sora is so confident in it that he already started production on the second season."
"But doesn't Kantoku Sora have a new work whose title hasn't even been announced yet? How is he already working on season two of Shingeki no Kyojin?"
"His company has more than six hundred employees now. Of course they need to produce more works. What, you think he's going to pay people to sit around doing nothing?"
"It's already afternoon. I'm counting down the hours until Shingeki no Kyojin premieres tonight. What kind of ratings do you think the first episode will get? Can it break 5%?"
"Why ask something that stupid? With Kantoku Sora's current popularity and influence, breaking 5.5% on premiere is basically guaranteed. If you think a little bigger, even 6% isn't impossible."
"Breaking 6% is too much. The internet industry has grown too much now. A lot of people prefer watching online and barely watch TV anymore. It's not like before. How can you even imagine a new anime premiere breaking 6%?"
"Exactly. The four major networks were provoked by Kantoku Sora and poured huge amounts of money into all kinds of top-tier productions, but even they can barely break 5% on premiere. And you open your mouth and say 6%. Stop putting such an absurd filter over him. You're just attracting hate."
From the afternoon onward, the anime section of the NatsuYume forum was practically dominated by topics about Shingeki no Kyojin.
This season, five television networks had a total of eleven major anime productions premiering. Even so, by this point, Japanese anime fans no longer seemed to see anything except Shingeki no Kyojin.
The four major networks had already targeted Sora many times before. And even back when his fame had not yet become so overwhelming, all of them had been defeated by him in different ways.
Now, things were even simpler.
Whenever Sora released a new work, the market already assumed by default that it would be the most popular title of the season.
Even if Shingeki no Kyojin turned out to be so bad it resembled a complete disaster, the trust and loyalty of Sora's fans had reached such a level that many would probably say the problem lay in their own inability to understand the story. Maybe it was foreshadowing planted by him. Maybe it was a brilliant narrative choice. Maybe they needed to watch it for three straight weeks before judging its true substance.
That day was a Friday.
Kaede left work early and went straight home. She ordered delivery through an app, scheduling it to arrive at exactly 7:50 p.m. Then she tidied the table, arranged everything carefully, and kept her eyes fixed on the television.
As a devoted fan of Sora for several years, she could feel her heart beating faster. Excitement rose little by little in her chest, as if the entire wait for this season had been concentrated into these final minutes before the premiere.
At exactly eight o'clock, the boring commercial on Shikoku Alliance TV ended.
The television screen changed.
Dusk.
Birds in flight.
White clouds.
Silent, heavy images, filled with an oppression that was hard to explain, appeared one after another.
Kaede's gaze lit up.
"It's starting."
A small city surrounded by walls appeared on the screen. Then, a gigantic hand grabbed the top of the wall.
Behind the wall, the face of an enormous humanoid creature slowly emerged. Its red body, exposed muscles steaming from the flesh, rose above the city like a living calamity. Its cold eyes looked down at the humans on the other side of the wall as if they were fragile, insignificant ants.
On that day, humanity remembered.
They remembered the terror of living under their rule.
They remembered the humiliation of being trapped inside a cage.
At that exact moment, the soundtrack of Shingeki no Kyojin erupted with intensity, matching the overwhelming presence of that colossal titan with exposed flesh.
Kaede felt her scalp tingle.
The image quality, the music, the lines...
Although she was a girl, she could not help feeling that the red titan, terrifying as it was, carried an absurd sense of pressure. It was frightening, yes, but it was also far too powerful to look away from.
So the main story of this work was going to be humanity fighting monsters like that?
The opening scene ended quickly. Soon after, on a rainy night, horses galloped through a forest.
To a layperson, that scene might have seemed like nothing more than a few dozen people riding horses among trees. Nothing particularly impressive.
But to professionals in the animation industry, especially key animators and action Kantokus, that cut carried a very different weight. The human bodies moved with fluidity, the horses advanced with life, and every movement conveyed real speed, strength, and tension.
They felt their scalps tingle too.
This animation was far too strong.
What kind of elite animator was needed to draw a cut with this level of expressiveness?
The hundreds of millions of yen invested into Shingeki no Kyojin clearly had not been wasted. And although the first season, as the work's gateway, had received a slightly higher budget, the fluidity and frame count across the entire adaptation far surpassed the usual standard of a televised production.
On the rainy night, the horses charged forward. A steel cable shot from a soldier's waist and latched onto the trees, and soon the human body cut through the air with an agility that would make even gymnastics champions break into a cold sweat. Then, the soldier flew toward the nape of a titan's neck and delivered a clean strike.
At that instant, almost every viewer sitting in front of a television was conquered.
Even without fully understanding it, it was simply thrilling to watch.
Then the opening song of Shingeki no Kyojin began.
The visuals were dark and heavy, wrapped in an atmosphere of despair. The male voice sounded tragic and furious at the same time, like a cry of resistance born from within a losing war.
Because the lyrics had been adapted into Japanese for the national broadcast, certain misheard-lyric jokes that might have existed in other versions did not apply here. Even so, Guren no Yumiya filled Japanese viewers, who were already full of anticipation for the anime, with a surge of excitement far beyond what they had expected.
At that moment, many fans were already using the brief moments between the song's lines to comment frantically online.
"Is Kantoku Sora's creative power even human?"
"Damn, what's the name of this song? I'm covered in goosebumps."
"This opening was also created by Kantoku Sora? He's a monster. If he didn't direct anime and became an independent musician instead, wouldn't he still be an absurd existence in Japan?"
"Incredible. Just with this opening alone, I bet tons of anime viewers are already fired up."
Kaede took a deep breath, trying to calm her excitement.
After Guren no Yumiya ended, the title of the first episode appeared on the screen.
To You, Two Thousand Years From Now.
That title, in truth, was a deeply buried piece of foreshadowing. Its meaning could only be understood by viewers once the work was nearly reaching its end.
At the very beginning of the episode, the protagonist, Eren, still a child, was lying beneath a tree. In his dream, he saw a succession of bloody and incomprehensible scenes, fragmented images that seemed to make no sense at all.
That, too, was foreshadowing.
Eren slept beneath the tree.
Beside him was Mikasa, the girl who accompanied him.
After devoting a few cuts to the two of them, the anime moved the camera beyond the walls.
There, a group of enormous titans wandered aimlessly. Their faces were empty, almost numb, like lost souls without wills of their own.
Kaede widened her eyes, carefully absorbing that world.
Titans ate people.
That was why humanity had built walls to keep them away.
Soldiers of the Garrison drank, played cards, and killed time during working hours. Hannes, a man kind to Eren, appeared like a familiar presence. Eren himself, meanwhile, showed an intense personality, unable to tolerate injustice, shouting furiously at the soldiers who had grown complacent.
In just a few minutes, Kaede understood the foundation of that universe.
Titans devoured humans.
Humans, in turn, had locked themselves behind walls, surrendering to a numb, comfortable, futureless life.
"What's the difference between that and pigs in a pen?"
Or perhaps...
Kaede thought for a moment.
To animals raised in captivity, the humans who fed them only to satisfy their own appetites might also be mindless monsters.
The moment she understood the logic of that world, her interest rose all at once.
patre0n ImmortalEmperor