Week after week passed, and The Girl Called God exploded in popularity just as expected.
At the end of August, the first DVD volume went on sale with first-week numbers surpassing forty thousand, leaving the entire anime industry stunned.
Then, according to Aoi, numerous planning companies had already started considering light novel adaptation projects.
The light novel adaptation boom was on its way.
On the flip side, the era of galge adaptations was winding down.
In early September, the PV for Code Geass dropped.
With solid promotion and the residual influence from Clannad, the attention was decent.
As for audience reactions, roughly half expressed excitement while the other half remained skeptical.
The PV generated a fair amount of discussion, though it was nowhere near the level of The Girl Called God. It could not even match School Days.
School Days was not exactly a massive hit in terms of raw popularity, but its discussion value was through the roof, almost rivaling The Girl Called God.
The reason for all that buzz was that this anime, just like its counterpart in the other world, had delivered a jaw-dropping twist in its final stretch.
The anime had three female leads: the first was the school's ice queen goddess, the second was the male lead's classmate and close friend, and the third was an innocent and adorable underclassman.
The male lead was written as a total horndog, the type who wanted every pretty girl he laid eyes on.
At first, he did not have any designs on the second or third girls. He was laser-focused on winning over the ice queen.
With the second girl's help, he successfully won over the first girl and even scored a home run.
Then the second girl started acting strange.
Watching the male lead and the first girl being all lovey-dovey, she got jealous. Only then did she realize she had fallen for the male lead a long time ago without ever noticing.
She knew it was wrong to interfere with someone else's relationship, but unable to suppress her feelings, she confessed to the male lead anyway.
The male lead's reaction was painfully realistic: a pretty girl was throwing herself at him, so of course he said yes.
He even made up an excuse for himself: she was his best friend, and if he rejected her, it would hurt her feelings, and they might not even stay friends.
The second girl had not expected him to actually accept. She asked what about the first girl, and he told her, "You're the one who matters most to me."
He also said he would find the right time to break things off with the first girl.
He had no intention of following through, but the second girl believed him.
Thrilled and overwhelmed, she made the first move.
Afterward, the male lead thought to himself: he already had two girlfriends, so why not go for the cute underclassman too?
He actively pursued the third girl, won her over, and did not spare her innocence either.
Up to this point, for a certain type of viewer, things were still pretty entertaining.
But in the final stretch, the story took a complete one-eighty.
The male lead's three-timing got exposed.
All three girls confronted him, each demanding he dump the other two. The male lead kept denying everything, dodging responsibility, and spouting one scummy excuse after another.
In the final episode, episode twelve, the enraged first girl took a hatchet to him.
The moment the hatchet ending dropped, the internet predictably erupted.
"Are you kidding me? The first half was so entertaining, and then this ending?"
"Makoto, what a way to go!"
"A hatchet ending? Is this secretly based on the bad route of some galge?"
"What is wrong with the world? I just wanted to watch a bishoujo anime and instead I got this gut-punch of an ending."
"Seriously, what is it with scriptwriters these days? Can't they just act like normal human beings?"
"I mean, the guy kind of deserved it, but this ending is still way too much."
...
Yuta had been following School Days the whole time, so he found out about the ending right away.
He thought back to the question Daigo Sagara had asked him.
Should he stay true to the characters' established personalities, or force them toward his planned ending even if it broke their characterization?
Back then, Yuta had not fully understood the dilemma.
Now he did.
Daigo had probably intended a happy ending from the start. But as he kept writing the script, he realized something was off. Given who these characters were, a happy ending did not make sense.
So he came to Yuta for advice. At the time, Yuta knew nothing about the specifics, so he naturally answered that character integrity should be respected.
Daigo must have found that advice reasonable. He went back and wrote the script in complete accordance with the characters' established personalities, and the end result was a scumbag protagonist getting hatcheted.
In truth, this anime shared plenty of similarities with its other-world counterpart, but it was also quite different in many ways. To Yuta, it was essentially an entirely unfamiliar show.
But since he had been mentally prepared from the start, watching the male lead get the axe did not feel depressing at all. If anything, he found it a little funny.
On impulse, he went online and posted an anonymous comment.
[Definitely a depressing ending. Scriptwriters these days really have no conscience. Compared to this, Yuta Shido who made Clannad was actually pretty decent. At least he gave us a happy ending.]
Since the topic was trending, his comment quickly attracted replies.
"Speaking of Clannad... never mind, I don't want to reopen those wounds."
"By that logic, Shido Devil really was the more considerate one."
"Clannad was only brutal in the second half of season two. Everything else was perfect. You can't even compare the two."
"I used to think that bastard deliberately put in depressing content. Looking at it now, maybe I was wrong about him."
'That's right, you absolutely misjudged me.'
Yuta felt quietly satisfied. People were being pretty reasonable after all.
It might be a little shameless to think this way, but the existence of School Days actually seemed to be working in his favor. He was just thinking that when a brand new comment appeared.
[Everything is that bastard Shido's fault. Before his Clannad came along, bishoujo anime was getting formulaic, sure, but you almost never saw depressing twists. Characters dying was literally unthinkable. Clannad was great, I will admit it is the masterpiece of all masterpieces, but it set a terrible precedent. From now on, who knows what kind of horrifying endings might show up in bishoujo anime.]
This comment had barely appeared before it was flooded with likes.
Yuta: "???"
'How did this circle back to me again?'
Fine, in this world, he had been the first to kill off a character in a slice-of-life anime. But you could not pin every bad thing on him.
He had absolutely nothing to do with School Days!
He refused to take the blame for this!
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