By late July, Your Name's total box office had crossed 32 billion yen. Two weeks after release, the decline rate was far below expectations, sustained by the volume of viewers returning for second and third screenings.
This directly compressed the box office available to new films releasing in the following two weeks.
There was nothing to be done about it. The film market operated on these terms. If a film released two weeks after another could not compete in screen allocation and daily box office, the problem was the film, not the competition.
Being weaker did not confer any particular right to the slot.
The practitioners who came out to publicly criticise Your Name were mostly unconnected to the films that had actually competed against it in the summer season.
The investors, directors, and actors behind those directly competing films were notably full of praise for it, acknowledging that the summer season results were deserved.
Criticising a film that had just beaten you in direct competition would have read as precisely the kind of behaviour they wanted to avoid.
The discussion heat around Your Name's plot dissipated after approximately half a month, as it always did once the foreshadowing had been fully revealed and the story had concluded.
The Japan animation community's attention returned to Attack on Titan.
"I spent the past two weeks focused on Your Name and coasted through the build-up episodes of Attack on Titan. Convenient timing."
"It was not purely build-up. The Female Titan arc episodes were exciting. Just also very bloody."
"The Female Titan is clearly another human Shifter. The intelligence in how she moves and targets is not something a mindless Titan produces."
"The foreshadowing in this series has accumulated to a point where I genuinely cannot construct the full picture of what the truth is. This is either masterful plotting or I am not paying close enough attention."
"The whole thing is very depressing. I still prefer something like Your Name."
"There is apparently movement inside Illumination Production Company lately. A friend of mine works there. They are assembling a new project team and reviewing the internal roster. This only happens when a new production is starting."
"Illumination Production Company is currently running Higurashi: When They Cry and Attack on Titan simultaneously. No Game No Life and Summer Time Rendering start in October. Where exactly is the capacity for another new work coming from."
"Normal logic does not apply to Illumination Production Company. A typical large animation studio has two or three hundred people and considers itself substantial.
Most small studios have a dozen core members handling critical work and outsourcing everything else. Illumination Production Company has never produced a loss-making work since its founding, which means it can sustain expansion at a scale no other studio would attempt.
Add their outsourcing network and the financial position that comes from Shirogane-sensei's catalogue, and the production capacity becomes less surprising. Other companies are competing for talent. Illumination Production Company has people from across the industry trying to get in."
"Whatever new work is coming is at least half a year away. The only thing we can watch right now is Attack on Titan. I tried a few episodes of Higurashi: When They Cry. It is fine. Just not my preference."
"I genuinely like Higurashi: When They Cry. I just cannot work out how many episodes constitute a chapter or what it means that the timeline resets each time."
When eight o'clock arrived, every one of these discussants disappeared simultaneously. The latest Attack on Titan episode had started.
Approximately thirty minutes later they returned to the forums. Every prior topic had been replaced by a single subject.
The episode had followed the Female Titan successfully reaching the Survey Corps formation outside the wall, specifically locating Eren within it.
Erwin, who had been running the operation to use Eren as bait to expose and capture the Armored Titan and Colossal Titan, had instead caught an unexpected target: the Female Titan.
In the latter half of the episode, hundreds of pre-set steel wire traps fired simultaneously, pinning the Female Titan in place and rendering her immobile.
Eren's orders from his superiors were clear: once the bait operation concluded, leave immediately and return to the main camp. He was not to engage.
The enemy's objective was Eren himself, and even with the Female Titan restrained, his commanders were not willing to risk him.
Eren hesitated between transforming to fight and following the order to withdraw.
"You chose to trust us back then, and now the Female Titan has been captured. Making the right choice is never easy."
Petra, one of Captain Levi's squad members, said this with a gentle smile.
Then the question of whether a right choice actually existed in any stable sense arrived.
At the episode's end, the Female Titan summoned ordinary Titans to consume her restrained body, using the chaos of their feeding to break free of the wire trap.
She then donned a Survey Corps uniform, concealed her face, and used ODM Gear to pursue Eren and the Levi Squad protecting him. Through a targeted ambush, she killed one of the squad members.
The episode ended at this point.
The arc's full climax had begun.
"Who exactly is the Female Titan? Is she actually someone from the Survey Corps?"
"Not necessarily. The Titan form is female but the person inside could be male. Shirogane-sensei might be using conventional assumptions to mislead us."
"What is clear is that whoever it is can use ODM Gear at a high level. That effectively limits the candidate pool to the four military regiments. Only people trained within the walls master ODM Gear."
"Shirogane-sensei's cliffhangers are genuinely painful."
"Erwin admitted he miscalculated. In this story, miscalculations have prices. Is Eren actually going to be captured by the Female Titan's human form? I have a bad feeling."
"This was supposed to be an anime about fighting Titans. How did it become a mystery about the identities of three specific Titans. I am not complaining. I am just noting the transformation."
"Three more episodes. Please. One episode per week is not enough."
"Twenty episodes in and the world-building has only been partially revealed. This series cannot conclude in under a hundred episodes."
"It should run similarly to One-Punch Man. With just these Titan identity mysteries remaining it cannot be dragged out indefinitely."
"Brothers. See you next week."
"See you next week."
"I hope next week is not the start of the tragedy. The Female Titan escaped a certain-death situation by allowing wild Titans to eat her restrained body. She is now hunting Eren. I am somewhat frightened."
"Eren can transform. The Levi Squad is protecting him. If the Female Titan comes for them she will simply die. Four against one. Counter-kill is not possible. Do not worry unnecessarily."
"What if they actually do get counter-killed."
"..."
"..."
"If they do then this protagonist might as well stay dead. I am not watching an anime where the male lead is this incompetent."
The episode had fully stirred up Attack on Titan's audience. Since the boulder-plugging sequence, fans across Japan and overseas had been waiting for the moment when Eren would have a proper stage to perform on. After nearly two months of setup, that stage had finally been set.