With Sora's level as a Kantoku, how could anyone believe he would create an anime so confusing that no one could make sense of it?
From the very first episode, there were far too many signs that something was wrong.
Dr. Nakabachi's time machine theory clearly felt suspicious. Kurisu said she had met Okabe fifteen minutes earlier, yet Okabe had no memory of it. That alone was already too important to ignore.
The same went for the metal Upa from the capsule machine. It was mentioned again and again, and the characters even went out of their way to search for it, as if that tiny toy carried far more weight than it seemed.
After Kurisu was murdered, Okabe sent a single message, and even the past that had already happened appeared to change. That was definitely not normal.
An anime with an investment of over ninety million yen, with a production cost exceeding two hundred thousand yen per minute, had spent an entire minute showing its three main characters microwaving bananas.
And no matter how he looked at it, Riku Wakaba could not bring himself to believe that banana was just a normal banana.
He tried to connect all those strange points, all those clues that felt like foreshadowing, but he could not form a clear line between them.
After all, what else could one get by putting a banana in a microwave besides an overripe banana?
"Huh?"
Riku stared blankly at the screen.
Inside the microwave, the banana had turned bluish-black, spoiled and distorted, its texture soft and gelatinous.
What…
Was that?
Was this anime actually a fantasy?
Had some mage cast a supernatural attack on a banana?
Impossible.
What kind of bored magician would target a banana?
Then, inside the elevator on the way home, the protagonist's best friend, the overweight hacker Daru, mentioned a crucial piece of information.
Okabe had sent him a message last week.
The content of the message was simple.
Kurisu was stabbed.
Riku still did not fully understand what was going on, but in that instant, his scalp tingled.
Last week?
Hadn't Okabe sent that message at noon today?
How could it have arrived a week earlier?
Strictly speaking, Steins;Gate was the kind of anime that newer fans would have a hard time getting into. Its early setup was slow, and the first episode was packed with foreshadowing. Every line of dialogue, every gesture, every shot could be hiding something important.
Younger anime fans might not be able to sense the tempting scent coming from those buried clues. To them, the plot would only feel slow, scattered, almost like something written by a rookie screenwriter making things up as he went along.
But for Riku Wakaba, a veteran anime fan with twenty years of experience, the viewing experience was completely different.
After Okabe sent that message, the entire course of his day changed.
The time machine lecture that should have happened in his life was canceled because of a satellite falling from the sky. And the message he sent after seeing Kurisu stabbed ultimately reached Daru one week in the past.
The key was in that message.
This anime was not a romance.
It was not a supernatural powers series.
It was a mystery built around suspense and unraveling secrets.
Riku realized that immediately.
And the final shot of the episode delivered its atmosphere with perfect timing. As the elevator doors opened in front of Okabe and Daru, the silhouette of a red-haired woman appeared.
It was Kurisu.
The genius scientist who, in Okabe's memory, had been stabbed and left dead in a pool of blood.
The ending theme began to play softly.
Riku took a deep breath, his mind still replaying the episode.
He did not understand everything.
But unexpectedly, he found it interesting.
He could vaguely sense that the story contained an extremely meticulous structure, with narrative clues hidden inside details that seemed meaningless at first glance. Those unknown rules kept releasing a quiet pull, drawing him deeper into the work.
At the same time, he understood something else.
Veteran anime fans like him were a minority.
For most Japanese anime viewers…
Riku opened the NatsuYume forum.
Sure enough, the debate had already exploded.
"What garbage. I wasted more than twenty minutes of my life."
"Are the haters really this impatient? It only just started airing, and you already couldn't wait to jump out?"
"Sora has such a huge reputation, so I made time tonight specifically to watch his new work. I didn't expect it to be this boring. I watched the whole episode and still have no idea what this anime is supposed to be about. The plot contradicts itself all over the place."
"The first episode was just introducing the setting and planting foreshadowing. If you didn't understand it, stop yelling. Wait a few weeks until the rules are explained, then come back."
"Exactly. Re:Zero also needed a nearly fifty-minute special first episode to make its premise clear. What are you all panicking for?"
"But at least in Re:Zero, you could understand the main storyline, right? In the first episode of Steins;Gate, there's no main line at all. The plot is a mess. They look for a metal Upa, send a text message, fix a microwave, have an awkward conversation with the muscular landlord downstairs, then microwave a banana and somehow turn it into a green jelly thing that looks like a biological weapon. And then Kurisu dies and comes back to life? Honestly, the story is too chaotic. It's anime, so it doesn't have to be realistic, sure, but this is just one random thing after another. It made my head hurt."
"That's how you guys felt? I thought it was pretty interesting. I didn't fully understand it either, but I actually think waiting for the story to slowly reveal the answers could be fun."
"I know all these weird parts in the first episode probably have a reason, but just imagining that the main plot might be about figuring out why the banana turned into green jelly and why the text message was sent one week into the past already sounds boring."
Online, as soon as the first episode of Steins;Gate aired, the audience started arguing.
Fans who had followed Re:Zero were quite patient. After all, watching Re:Zero weekly had also been full of anxiety, confusion, and emotional torment. More importantly, they trusted Sora's creative ability. Not understanding everything after one episode was not enough to make them drop the series.
But casual viewers had no such tolerance.
If they did not understand it, then they did not understand it. If the viewing experience was bad, then it was bad. Sora might be famous, but they did not care.
Half an hour later, The Mystery of the Dark Detective premiered on Shirakawa TV.
Unlike the controversial discussion surrounding Steins;Gate, the first episode of this anime received a flood of praise.
The internet was filled with posts saying that Kantoku Maki had not lost his edge.
After just one episode, the early reputation of the two anime had already taken different paths.
The next day, the NatsuYume scores for both works were released.
Steins;Gate: 8.7.
The Mystery of the Dark Detective: 9.1.
But the ratings told a different story.
The first episode of Steins;Gate achieved 5.09%.
The first episode of The Mystery of the Dark Detective achieved 4.83%.
The veteran Kantoku had a great reputation, but newer anime fans did not necessarily buy into his name. For his premiere to reach 4.83%, relying on old fans and the quality of the new work, was already an excellent result.
Sora, however, was one of the leading young anime Kantokus in Japan at the moment. Across the country, he had tens of millions of adult and young anime fans. Just out of respect for Re:Zero and Five Centimeters per Second, many viewers were willing to sit through the premiere patiently, instead of dropping the show simply because the first episode of Steins;Gate felt too dense.
That was why the premiere broke past 5%.
But accumulated prestige could not sustain a work forever.
Tokyo's old Big Four networks understood that. The Southern Broadcasting Alliance understood that. Japan's anime media understood it as well.
And naturally, Sora understood it better than anyone.
Even so, he was not worried.
When Steins;Gate had aired in his previous life, it had gone through the same stages: heavy doubt in the early episodes, sudden clarity in the middle, and godlike acclaim by the end.
Now, in Japan's anime industry, it would have to walk that road once again.
What Sora needed to do at the moment was simple.
Steady the restless hearts of his fans.
In the past, he would not have bothered doing anything. Once an anime began airing, the results it could achieve were not something easily changed by outside action.
But the Southern Broadcasting Alliance's results last quarter had been far too bleak. The company needed market confidence, stable ratings, investment, and stock price support.
Because of that, Sora also had to calm his anime fans and encourage them to keep watching as much as possible.
On Saturday afternoon, he pinned a comment on his official social media account.
Steins;Gate is an even better work than Re:Zero - provided that you can endure its slow-burning early setup.
Better than Re:Zero?
Many anime fans instinctively wanted to believe Sora.
But there were also people who thought he was bragging and deliberately creating hype.
Fortunately, Steins;Gate was not the only work Sora had created this season.
On Saturday night, after the first episode of AD premiered, the audience's praise for it drowned out much of the doubt surrounding Steins;Gate.
The story followed the meeting and gradual bond between Tomoya Okazaki, a jaded high school student, and Nagisa Furukawa, a shy girl from the same school.
The class representative sisters, Kyou Fujibayashi and Ryou Fujibayashi; his best friend Youhei Sunohara; Nagisa's parents; the couple who ran the bakery…
The first episode of AD displayed gorgeous character designs, artistic background art, and a beautiful soundtrack also "created" by Sora - distinctive, delicate, and unmistakably its own.
To put it plainly, the first season of AD was indeed weaker than the second season in terms of narrative power. But at its core, it was still an excellent romance anime.
In every aspect, it reached the top tier of Japanese romance animation.
So it was only natural that, after its premiere, it received praise from anime fans and achieved high ratings.
However, on the same night that AD premiered, The Demon of Time, Seiun TV's main push for the season, also aired its first episode.
Compared with a fantasy battle anime made by one of the top Kantokus of Japan's previous generation after so many years away, the initial viewing experience of AD was slightly weaker.
After all, AD was an adaptation of a GAGA game, and its first episode spent a large portion of its runtime introducing characters. More than ten characters appeared in that single episode alone, while the main plot barely advanced.
So when placed side by side with a top-tier Japanese original anime like The Demon of Time, it was natural for AD to fall slightly behind.
On Sunday, the results came out.
AD premiered with a score of 9.2 and ratings of 5.16%.
The Demon of Time premiered with a score of 9.2 and ratings of 5.19%.
By Sunday night, Aobane TV's main anime Crimson Scales and HaiOn TV's main anime Sea of Clouds also premiered one after another.
The premiere scores of the two first episodes were 9.1 and 8.9 respectively.
Their ratings were 5.14% and 4.97%.
With that, after the first week of Japan's winter anime season, the ratings ranking of the six major works had appeared.
The highest premiere rating belonged to Aobane TV's The Demon of Time.
Meanwhile, Sora'sAD and Steins;Gate ranked second and fourth respectively in the first-week ratings of the winter anime market.
Once those results appeared, both Tokyo's old Big Four networks and the Southern Broadcasting Alliance were quite satisfied.
For the Big Four, the high first-episode ratings of AD and Steins;Gate were clearly riding on the bonus left behind by Re:Zero. After a few episodes, once the fans' initial excitement faded, if the plots of the two works did not improve noticeably, their ratings would certainly fall.
Especially that work called Steins;Gate.
The controversy surrounding its first episode was too large. At a glance, it looked dangerous.
Based on industry experience, if that anime could not reverse its reputation within three episodes, the chance of it flopping was extremely high.
Sora had said the work was a slow burn, and might even surpass Re:Zero.
But the reality was simple. No matter how godlike the later plot became, if the beginning dragged too badly, not many fans would keep watching long enough to reach that point.
Commercial anime had to look like commercial anime. The pacing, story, and narrative rhythm all had to keep up with the audience's tastes.
If a Kantoku fell too deeply into artistic self-indulgence, it did not matter how famous he was. If the work was going to flop, it would flop.
As for the Southern Broadcasting Alliance, they understood even better that there was no such thing as an evergreen tree in the television industry.
If Sora could maintain his standard and keep his works around the 5% ratings range, that would already be an unexpected joy.
The premiere results of AD and Steins;Gate were far stronger than the main anime they had pushed last quarter.
As for the future…
Hadn't Sora said both works were slow burns?
Then the later results should at least stabilize, and might even grow.
Tokyo's old Big Four networks expected that, as time passed, the ratings of Sora's two anime would fall lower and lower.
The Southern Broadcasting Alliance thought the exact opposite. Because of Sora's words, they expected that as the stories unfolded, the ratings of both works would climb higher and higher.
As for Sora, he could not be bothered to pay attention to the various storms of public opinion online. He simply kept his head down and continued working on the production of the two anime.
However, within the whirlpool of discussion surrounding Sora that season, aside from his two new anime, there was another work that surprised the Southern Broadcasting Alliance even more.
The television drama Liar Game, which also premiered at nine o'clock on Sunday night.
Its premiere ratings were not high. Limited by the Southern Broadcasting Alliance's weakness in the drama sector, its fixed drama audience was far smaller than that of the Big Four.
Even so, the premiere still reached 4.3%. Although it remained in fifth place for its time slot, it was already stronger than the station's main project from the previous quarter.
And the reputation of its first episode was unexpectedly good.
Right after its premiere, the drama received a score of 9.1, ranking second among all Japanese dramas that had launched that season.
That result surprised quite a few members of the Japanese media.
But only to that extent.
Even within the drama production departments of the Big Four networks, the staff responsible for that segment did not take the show seriously.
A drama script written at the last minute by an anime screenwriter could not possibly create a miracle, could it?
The score was a little high, yes.
But if even that was enough to make everyone panic, then no one in the industry would be able to sleep peacefully ever again.
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