The buzz around Shirogane's upcoming wedding dominated Japan's entertainment scene for over half a month, with major media coverage appearing almost every day.
When Miyu had simply been his girlfriend, many of Rei's fans had been lukewarm toward her. But a wife was a different matter entirely. The dynamic shifted. During the weekly Dream Comic Journal voting, many of Rei's fans now made a point of casting a vote for Reincarnation as well.
Because of the wedding buzz, a large number of Rei's fans began taking an interest in Saki's manga catalog. Both her previous tankobon Touch of Glass and the currently serialized Reincarnation saw a clear and significant rise in popularity and readership. This directly pushed Reincarnation, which had previously held a somewhat precarious position, into a firm lock on second place in the journal rankings.
The battle for Dream Comic's ranking was no longer in question.
As a result, Miyu's standing in Japan's manga world was fully cemented, placing her among the ranks of first-tier mangakas.
Naturally, some people grumbled that part of Miyu's success came from riding Rei's fanbase.
But saying so only invited ridicule. Plenty of so-called first-tier mangakas in the journals lacked genuine skill and relied entirely on their publisher groups flooding money into promotion to stack up ten-million-copy sales figures, and those achievements were recognized without complaint.
Why should Saki be any different? Touch of Glass was a solid achievement she had earned on her own merits during its serialization. Now she simply had an accomplished husband, and some of his fanbase had spilled over to support her new work. Was that really worth mocking?
Japan's anime community, on the whole, was rational about it. Miyu's work and her achievements were recognized for what they were.
The thing Miyu had quietly dreaded, that any future success she achieved would be dismissed as her husband's doing or seen as nepotism, never came to pass.
Part of that was simply timing. The news of Rei and Miyu's wedding had swallowed up nearly every other conversation in the anime world during that period.
The backlash against Gabi, that deeply flawed character at the start of Attack on Titan's fourth season, gradually quieted down. The blowback was ultimately not as severe as it had been in Rei's previous life.
Even so, it was inevitable that Attack on Titan's reputation would dip as it moved into its fourth season. No matter how carefully the production team had refined the source material, and Rei had made numerous micro-adjustments on top of the improvements the anime team in his previous life had already implemented, the fact remained: the fourth and final seasons were simply not as brilliant as what came before. That was an unchangeable reality.
It wasn't a failure of plotting or execution. The problem was structural. The world of Attack on Titan had been almost fully revealed by this point. The major mysteries were essentially gone. The sense of scale and wonder that had driven audiences through the first three seasons, the Survey Corps charging headlong into the unknown and dedicating their hearts to humanity, had weakened considerably.
On top of that, Eren's personality underwent a dramatic shift. His relationships with Mikasa, Armin, and Captain Levi cooled to near-freezing. An Eren faction emerged within the walls, made up of devoted supporters and opportunists hoping to ride his rise to power, triggering a struggle with the existing political factions.
These developments wore down the enthusiasm of some fans. The tension in the later stages of Titan was simply not what it once was. It felt more like a political drama. The intense, blood-pumping battle sequences the audience had come to love grew scarcer, while exposition and character-driven scenes took up more and more space. Former enemies like the Beast Titan, Zeke, temporarily allied with the people inside the walls.
That left many fans uneasy. Levi and Commander Erwin still sat comfortably in the top three of the character popularity rankings to this day. When Eren could stand alongside Zeke of all people, what did that say about Erwin and the others from the Survey Corps who had given everything in the third season?
Many fans had opinions about those choices. But it never reached the point of sustained bashing or large-scale fan defection. Rei's track record was simply too strong, and his reputation for never fumbling an ending gave fans a high threshold for trust. They grumbled, but they stayed.
What was unavoidable, however, was the widespread disgust directed at Gabi's increasingly erratic behavior in the later plot. In the rankings for most hated Attack on Titan character, the Beast Titan Zeke had long held the top spot. By the end of August, Gabi had surpassed him by a landslide.
Hating Gabi was a consensus that transcended both worlds.
On a well-known rating website in Rei's previous life, manga fans had collectively boosted a horse in Titan to a character rating of 9.6 simply because it had bitten Gabi once. That alone said everything about the depth of feeling she inspired.
August ended.
September arrived.
September 1st was the day of Rei and Miyu's wedding.
Rei had originally been prepared to make it a grand affair. He had accumulated more money than he knew what to do with in his daily life, and this felt like an occasion worth spending it on. But Miyu had no interest in extravagance. What mattered most about a wedding was the person standing across from her, not the size of the spectacle.
So the scale stayed reasonable. A tasteful, upscale ceremony. Business partners, close friends, and family on both sides were invited. Twenty anime fans were randomly selected online to attend and observe. A professional photography team handled the live broadcast.
After Rei's wedding topped the trending lists across Japan's anime and film circles twice over, the excitement gradually faded.
As for Rei, he settled into the most comfortable stretch of time he had experienced since transmigrating to this world. He began his honeymoon with his wife, Miyu.
...
Throughout the entire month of September, Rei deliberately cut himself off from work.
In the eight years since transmigrating to this world, it was the first time he had done such a thing. Every previous vacation, every brief break, had always come with some thread still attached, some manuscript to review, some production note to send, some decision that only he could make. This time, he drew a clean line and stepped away entirely.
Not that Illumination Animation or Shirogane Animation ground to a halt because of it.
Both studios had long since grown beyond depending on Rei's daily presence to function. The production pipelines for Bleach, and the Demon Slayer film continued moving forward without a single day's delay.
The teams Rei had spent years building knew the standards expected of them, and they met those standards with or without him in the room.
When Rei did reach out remotely, offering a note here or a direction adjustment there, the output improved. But even left entirely to their own rhythm, both companies operated like well-maintained machines, advancing steadily along the work schedules Rei had mapped out long in advance. The infrastructure he had built was solid enough to run on its own.
Meanwhile, Attack on Titan continued its broadcast.
...
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