After this episode aired, the reaction across Japan's anime community was second only to the Eren death episode in terms of volume and intensity.
Criticism of the protagonist came from everywhere simultaneously.
"What did I just watch. That was Eren's big performance? That was it?"
"He followed orders and made the lowest-risk choice. Then when all three teammates were dead he went back alone to duel the Female Titan. Then he lost the duel and had his head removed.
Three separate failures in one episode. Any one of them alone would have been forgivable. All three together: is this really the male lead?
First choice showed no initiative. Second choice showed no strategic thinking. The fight showed insufficient strength. Can this person actually carry this series?"
"If Eren had ignored orders from the start and fought alongside his teammates, you would all be saying he was insubordinate and a liability. You are judging by results.
If the outcome had been good every decision would have been correct. The outcome was bad so everything was a mistake."
"That may be true. He is still the most frustrating protagonist Shirogane-sensei has ever created."
"His mother died and he was powerless. The Colossal Titan attacked Wall Rose and he was the first to rush out and get eaten.
He resurrected as a Titan under mysterious circumstances, then during his second transformation lost control and fell unconscious.
The Female Titan was trapped by Erwin's operation, depleted her transformation energy escaping, took significant damage from the Levi Squad, and still defeated Eren in under two minutes in her third engagement of the episode while he entered fresh.
I originally thought the people criticising Eren were just haters. Hearing it laid out this way: he really is quite weak."
"We just need to see how Mikasa and Levi handle this. Those two can win the situation regardless of what Eren contributed."
"Petra. Rare beauty in a series where the art style does not generally produce many of them. Very little screen time. Crushed by the Female Titan's foot. Shirogane-sensei genuinely has no mercy."
"Every few episodes this series produces something that shocks me with how cruel the plot is. Does Shirogane-sensei feel nothing when he writes these things?"
"He said in an interview that from his first year of high school, even when his house was mortgaged and he could have been evicted at any time, the train scene in Five Centimeters Per Second was already in the work. He has always been this way. He enjoys creation to an extraordinary degree. We are the ones suffering. He is fine."
"Sometimes I want to tell Shirogane-sensei that if he continues like this I will drop his works. Then I look at every other anime creator in Japan's market and realise there is no substitute. So I say nothing and continue watching."
One episode of Attack on Titan had generated enough fan resentment that the following morning, two or three trending topics on Japan's major anime platforms were specifically about criticising Shirogane-sensei. Industry professionals watching this development from the outside were experiencing a specific quality of speechlessness.
Trending topics created by fans cursing their own favourite creator. Topics that other properties could not buy onto the trending lists with direct promotional spending. Generated organically by people who were angry at something they would not stop watching.
Rei woke up and looked through the evaluations calmly.
In his previous life, Hajime Isayama had said something in an interview about his creative mindset for this series: that he wanted to hurt his readers. The works that had left the deepest impressions on him were the ones that had hurt him most. When he created his own work, he carried that impulse with him.
This was not a failure of empathy. It was the opposite. Authors who produced this kind of emotional damage understood the human heart precisely, knew exactly what would cause suffering, and chose to do it intentionally.
And whether in his previous life or in thid Japan, works with happy endings were simply never as unforgettable as works with tragic ones. This was an uncomfortable truth that remained true regardless of how uncomfortable it was.
"And this is only the beginning," Rei said to himself, and felt something close to amusement.
The first season was modest in its damage by the standards of what came later. From the second and third seasons onward, through the final season, the process of Eren transforming from everyone's trusted ally into the person the world needed to stop: that journey had similar things ahead of it.
Rei had been hurt by Attack on Titan in his previous life. He intended to give Japan's audience the equivalent experience.
He closed the laptop, got ready, and drove his car, which had been sitting unused for months, to a car wash first and then back to collect Miyu and Misaki from Miyu's house a few hundred metres away.
Then he drove to a cinema in the city centre that had been booked out entirely.
"As I promised. A cinema screening of The Garden of Words." He took Miyu's hand and led her inside.
Nearly a thousand Illumination Production Company employees filled the hall. Himari was there, alongside the directors responsible for the Demon Slayer anime films, and the directors assigned to the upcoming Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro productions. The middle and upper management followed behind them.
Illumination Production Company was a company where the people who actually produced the work held genuine authority. The directors' standing in the room exceeded that of the administrative executives. When they saw Rei, all of them, the directors included, addressed him the same way.
"Shirogane-sensei."
Himari was the chairman. Rei held a director position within the company structure. And yet this was how everyone in the room addressed him.
The title they gave him was not his corporate role. It was his identity as the screenwriter behind every work the company had ever produced.
"Everyone please proceed to your assigned halls. After The Garden of Words screening, the celebration banquet for Your Name will follow this afternoon."
The director responsible for the Spirited Away production, who had been waiting for exactly this opportunity, immediately began communicating with Rei about script details and visual art style decisions as they moved toward the hall entrance. The conversation continued through the corridor.
Rei had left the directing work to designated personnel, but his actual involvement in each production was closer to a third of a director's role in practice.
Replicating Hayao Miyazaki's specific visual language through phone instructions alone was not realistic. Character designs, background style, colour direction, music: all of it required his direct involvement at each major decision point.
The director had no complaints about this. Interference from someone without relevant ability would have been a hindrance. Interference from the screenwriter whose works over the past seven years had produced this track record was a different category of thing entirely.
However distinguished his own reputation in Japan's animation industry, he was not in a position to dismiss Rei's input.
Inside the hall, Miyu, who had been smiling beside Rei throughout the corridor conversation, let the smile rest.
"Is every day like this for you?"
"It is manageable. Communication on productions at this level needs to happen daily. If an error accumulates and requires correction later, the cost of modifying plot and visuals runs into the millions per minute. And the pressure on the production schedule becomes severe."
He paused.
"And it is not only this production. The music for both Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro also requires my involvement. I will be composing sheet music for the major insert songs in batches over the next month and handing them to the arrangement teams.
Two months after that, I need to begin discussions with Japan's major merchandise manufacturers and distributors about the commercial operation plans for both works."
Miyu's head was spinning slightly.
"You have already reached where you are. Why do you maintain this intensity?"
There was something in her eyes that was not quite concern and not quite sadness but was adjacent to both.
She had heard from Misaki that Rei's work pace was extraordinary. She had not previously understood the specific shape of it.
"Because I like it," Rei said, after a moment. "The same reason you, with enough money to sustain ten lifetimes, are still sitting at a desk exhausting yourself trying to work out the plot structure of your next manga."
Miyu went quiet.
The lights in their hall went down.
...
STONES PLZZ
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