When a single magazine serializes so many different series at once, the reality is that most readers do not follow every single one of them.
This was especially true for a publication like Azure Kiyozawa, which carried exactly twenty different titles in every issue. Most people were limited by time or simply found that certain stories did not align with their personal tastes, and as a result, they tended to be very selective about what they chose to read.
In these situations, the specific works a reader picked up were heavily influenced by how much the magazine prioritized their promotion, as well as their numerical ranking within the table of contents.
Among the twenty series currently running in Azure Kiyozawa, seventeen of the creators were light novelists signed to exclusive long-term contracts with Kiyozawa Library, while only three were working under simple, single-work agreements.
Aside from Haruto, the other two creators in this minority were in the same boat as him, receiving very little promotional support from the editorial department. Consequently, their placement in the magazine was quite low, and after more than half a year of serialization, they continued to hover in the bottom six of the rankings.
However, the trajectory of Parasyte was proving to be an anomaly.
Even if one were to overlook the fact that the first chapter debuted at the fourteenth spot, the shift by the fifth chapter was impossible to ignore. It had somehow climbed all the way to the eighth position.
Within the offices of Kiyozawa Library, many staff members were finally starting to take a serious look at the potential of this series.
"This Shiori Takahashi really does have some impressive tricks up his sleeve."
"The top six spots in Azure Kiyozawa are occupied by series that were transferred over from the flagship Kiyozawa magazine, meaning they already had massive built-in fanbases from the start. It's only natural for them to maintain high popularity. If we set those six aside, the eighth-place ranking for Parasyte means it's outperforming almost every work written by an author with a standard long-term contract. That's an exceptionally brilliant result."
"I remember it took Aika Miyamoto four full months to climb to the eighth spot with her previous novel, and she had the benefit of a massive marketing push from the company to get there. The fact that Shiori Takahashi reached that same height in just one month with almost zero resources behind him is nothing short of absurd."
"The readership for this novel has been built almost entirely through word of mouth and fan loyalty. Any interesting series serialized in a high-traffic magazine like Azure Kiyozawa is bound to gain popularity eventually, and marketing resources usually just speed up that natural process. Even so, the rate at which the popularity of Parasyte is rising feels almost terrifyingly fast."
"These are simply the results of the market making its choice. It only proves one thing, which is that Parasyte is significantly more compelling to the readers than many of the other series running alongside it."
"All I can say is that his title as the top newcomer really does carry significant weight."
"If he weren't so stubborn and would just sign a long-term contract, I can say with confidence that the company would be treating him like a precious treasure now that they've seen these results. They'd likely be planning to groom him into one of the top novelists in Japan and a cornerstone of the company. But unfortunately, that's not the case."
"That's true."
"A top-tier novelist is usually the product of a perfect storm involving company resources, raw talent, and a bit of luck to ensure the work hits the market at exactly the right time. Shiori Takahashi's potential feels immense, but without signing a long-term deal with a major publisher, how is he going to compete in the long run against peers who possess equal talent but also enjoy the full backing of a company behind them?"
"He'll probably come to his senses eventually."
"Let's hope so."
When a person possesses genuine skill and delivers undeniable results, it naturally changes how others perceive them. The success of Parasyte, reaching the eighth rank in Azure Kiyozawa without any corporate backing, earned the respect of many professionals at Kiyozawa Library. Those who had previously mocked Haruto as a typical arrogant youth with more ambition than luck were now singing a different tune.
Kiyozawa Library was divided into several different departments, and many of the staff members who saw the growing potential of Parasyte stopped worrying about the politics of the contract situation.
At the end of the day, a commercial publisher was driven by the bottom line.
The reason they preferred to support long-term contract authors was that those authors provided stable, long-term revenue. But Parasyte had demonstrated such high value that after weighing the pros and cons, management concluded the short-term gains from supporting this particular novel outweighed their previous concerns. They did not hesitate to pivot.
That very evening, the operations department held a meeting to overhaul their strategy for Parasyte.
Meanwhile, at Minazuki University, Haruto was focusing all his attention on a lecture being delivered by an elderly professor with thinning white hair.
Several months had passed since the start of the semester, and his daily life had settled into a steady rhythm of studying and spending his free time at the Manga Research Club. He would often meet with Shizuru there to exchange ideas and learn more about the technical side of illustration.
Shizuru had managed to trick a few of her friends into joining the club as nominal members, which was just enough to prevent the school from dissolving the group due to a lack of participants. However, she knew that if the club did not produce any tangible results soon, it would eventually be shut down anyway. Since she could see that Haruto was genuinely busy and had no immediate intention of collaborating with her on a manga, she had started looking elsewhere for a partner.
She eventually reached out to some promising newcomers in the Light Novel Club. Since she happened to be roommates with the vice president of that club, the two groups organized a few joint activities. Through these events, she gained the support of a particular member, and the two of them were now planning to follow the exact model Haruto had suggested, where one person wrote the story and Shizuru provided the art. They were determined to make a name for themselves in the industry.
Haruto gave her his full support. He had a very good impression of Shizuru, but he simply had not yet uncovered anything from Shiori's memories that would be suitable for a manga serialization at this time.
If he ever truly decided to enter the world of manga, he would not be against working with her. Her artistic skills were certainly high enough to rival a professional, and more importantly, if he were to choose a partner, he would want someone who was not overly driven by greed or ego.
He knew that in many cases, creative differences between partners could lead to a complete standstill in production, just like how ONE and Murata's collaboration in the parallel world eventually caused the serialization of the One Punch Man manga to stall due to disagreements in the later stages. In that regard, Shizuru was a perfect candidate because she was talented, cheerful, and easygoing.
For the time being, Haruto could only hope that the student from the Light Novel Club actually had the talent to match her enthusiasm. He had his doubts about the skill levels of amateur student writers, wondering if their work could even pass an initial editorial review at a mid-tier publisher, let alone one of the major publishing houses.
However, seeing how excited she was about the project, he assumed the story she had been shown must have some merit.
"I just hope her new manga submission doesn't get rejected again. If she's all gloomy about it, club meetings are going to be really awkward."
Haruto let his mind wander for a brief moment during class.
Two days later, he went to the driving center to take his final exam. He passed and received his driver's license on the spot. Even though he had opted for a premium one-on-one instruction service, it had still taken him months to reach this point. The process had been an exhausting ordeal.
While he was busy fantasizing about when and where he would go to buy his very first car, he hailed a taxi and headed toward the headquarters of Haru-Yuki Animation.
As one of the owners of the company, Haruto could not simply leave everything to his employees. The journey of an anime from production to broadcast involved countless negotiations with various parties, and many of these steps required his presence and his signature to finalize.
He was heading to the office today specifically to chair a meeting regarding a crucial decision. They needed to decide which platform would host the broadcast of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
In Japan, more than half of all produced anime series were typically aired on television. However, securing a slot on a high-traffic TV station was usually a privilege reserved for large companies with massive production budgets.
For instance, when Anohana was broadcast on Tokyo TV-4, the production company had to leverage many personal connections. The person in charge had spent many nights out drinking and dining with station executives, and they still had to pay a significant fee to secure the slot.
Indeed, many anime productions actually had to pay the television stations to be aired. The logic was that the station was essentially providing a massive advertisement for the series, which in turn drove the sales of merchandise and licensing in the secondary market.
Of course, this pay-to-play model was the standard for smaller, lesser-known animation studios. In contrast, high-profile anime series that were guaranteed to bring in high ratings were fought over by the stations, with broadcast rights sometimes reaching prices of tens or even hundreds of millions of yen.
Small companies that could not afford these advertising fees often bypassed television entirely and chose to sell high-definition Blu-rays directly to the market. This approach meant less exposure, but the costs were also much lower. Revenue would be smaller, but in many cases, these studios could still turn a modest profit.
"Even though we've only just begun the creative process, we need to decide on our distribution strategy immediately."
Takeda, the animation director, looked at Haruto with a very serious expression.
"Do we aim for a television broadcast, or do we simply release the discs and let the natural momentum of the market determine our success?"
"If we go with television, roughly how much would the advertising fee cost?" Haruto asked.
"There are four major stations with the highest popularity. The first tier includes Tokyo TV-1 and TV-2, where a high-quality series could command a viewership rating of five or six percent. The second tier consists of Tokyo TV-3 and a few others, which typically see ratings of three or four percent during prime time."
"The third tier includes various other local Tokyo stations and popular regional channels, where ratings rarely exceed two percent. Anything below that isn't worth discussing."
Takeda paused to let Haruto process the information before continuing with the financial details.
"A slot on a first-tier station would cost between thirty and fifty million yen, depending on the quality of the work and the specific time slot. If a studio is unknown, the stations would likely refuse to sell them a prime-time slot and would charge them a higher premium for the late-night hours."
"Second-tier stations cost between fifteen and twenty-five million yen, while the third-tier slots generally fall between eight and fifteen million yen."
Haruto understood the situation perfectly.
Although he thought the prices were extortionate, he accepted them as the reality of the industry.
He realized that since Tokyo TV-4 was a third-tier station, the studio behind Anohana must have paid at least ten to fifteen million yen for that spot. And just as Takeda had described, Anohana had opened with a roughly one percent rating and then climbed on the strength of its own quality to a three percent rating by its finale, finishing as one of the highest-rated new anime of its season.
"So, boss, what's the call?"
"We're definitely going with a television broadcast," Haruto said without hesitation.
He could not fathom the idea of letting a masterpiece like Madoka Magica skip TV and grow wildly in the market without a proper platform. This was Madoka. That would be far too cheap a treatment for a series of this caliber.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
He did not just want a TV slot; he wanted a slot on a first-tier station. He was not going to get hung up on the initial cost at this stage. This was Puella Magi Madoka Magica, not some generic, run-of-the-mill production. The more he invested in it, the greater the return would eventually be.
However, Haruto's current liquid assets were limited. After investing in the company and upgrading the equipment, and factoring in the projected production costs for the anime itself, he was careful with his remaining capital.
He considered his passive income from previous works and his monthly royalties from Kiyozawa Library, which brought in a substantial sum, and calculated that by the time the anime was ready for a summer premiere next year, he would have a larger buffer.
He realized that he still needed to be strategic for a first-tier television slot.
"Go ahead and get back to work for now. I'll find a way to secure the investment for the advertising fees."
After a brief silence, Haruto sent Takeda back to his duties.
He knew that a first-tier station's fee started at thirty million yen at the minimum, and since his company fit the profile of an unknown small studio, they would likely only offer him a non-prime-time slot even if he could pay.
Still, a late-night slot on a major station was often more valuable than a prime-time slot on a minor one. Of course, that did not mean the ratings would automatically be higher. It all came down to the quality of the content.
If you aired the evening news on Tokyo TV-1 at the same time as an adult romance film on Tokyo TV-3, the news would get absolutely destroyed in the ratings.
"I need to find a way to scrape together the funds so I can secure a slot on a premier network like Tokyo TV-1 or TV-2 for Madoka. Even a non-prime-time slot would be worth fighting for."
Money was just one of those things. No matter how much you made, it never seemed to be quite enough.
Haruto let out a long sigh.