April 25, Thursday.
It was almost 10:00 a.m. Shiga Taka looked around, then picked up his phone and went to the restroom.
Sitting on the toilet, he unlocked his phone and opened the ticketing app, ready to buy two movie tickets.
The tickets were scheduled to go on sale exactly at 10:00 a.m. Theoretically, there was no need to worry about not being able to get tickets, but... this was an animation by Lin Zhiyan, after all. Plus, the promotional campaign for this animation had been so aggressive that it felt like ads were everywhere lately. If he didn't rush to buy them, he was afraid he wouldn't get the best seats.
Since it was a romance animation, he naturally wanted to watch it with his girlfriend, Shiozawa Makoto. And since he was going with his girlfriend, how could he settle for anything less than the best seats?
Even if it meant slacking off for a few minutes, he had to secure the best seats.
Thinking this, he stared intently at the screen, waiting silently.
Time ticked by, second by second, until it finally reached 10:00 a.m.
The movie tickets for the opening day finally officially went on sale on the ticketing app.
Because it was during Golden Week and he didn't have to work that day, Shiga Taka chose a cinema close to where he lived, and naturally, for the first showing.
However, he had clearly made his selections before 10 o'clock and was just waiting to click purchase once sales opened. But when 10 o'clock actually arrived, he barely refreshed the page before the network suddenly froze.
It spun and spun, and by the time it finally loaded, it was already 10:01. He looked again, and the tickets for the best viewing area for the first showing at that cinema were already gone.
Not to mention the best seats, even more than half of the tickets in the second-best area had been sold.
"So many people are fighting for these?" Shiga Taka was very surprised.
Only a minute had passed!
Back when box office hits broke 30 billion yen in '01, there were no mobile ticketing apps, but if there had been, it probably would have been just like this.
After the surprise, Shiga Taka couldn't help but feel a twinge of frustration.
"Why did the network suddenly freeze?"
If it hadn't frozen just now, he felt he shouldn't have missed out on the tickets for the best viewing area.
Now that the best seats for the first showing were gone, what should he do?
Buy tickets in the second-best area?
Or should he check if there were any tickets left in the best viewing area for other showtimes or at other cinemas?
Just because the first showing at this cinema was sold out didn't mean it would be the same at other cinemas or for other showtimes.
The only problem was, what if he couldn't get tickets for the best viewing areas at those other cinemas or showtimes either?
If he waited until then to come back to this, would even the second-best seating areas be sold out?
He hesitated for a few seconds, still unable to make a decision, and refreshed the page on his phone again. To his utter bewilderment, in just those few seconds, even the tickets for the second-best viewing areas were gone, leaving only the relatively poorer ones.
Even some of those relatively poorer seats had already been snapped up.
"You've got to be kidding me? Is it really that crazy?" Shiga Taka was stunned.
But this time, he didn't need to hesitate. He exited the page and started checking tickets for other showtimes and other cinemas.
However, maybe it was because of that brief moment of hesitation, but now, even the best and second-best viewing areas for other showtimes on the day of the release were already gone.
As for other cinemas, within a twenty-kilometer radius, there wasn't a single one that had any tickets left for the best viewing areas.
It was getting ridiculous.
He sighed. Instead of buying tickets immediately, he opened LINE and sent a message to his girlfriend, Shiozawa Makoto: "Didn't manage to get tickets."
The message had just been sent when it was marked as "Read," and he quickly received a reply from Shiozawa Makoto: "Tickets? You mean tickets? I managed to get two."
Shiga Taka had initially assumed they would be for the worst viewing area, but Shiozawa Makoto immediately sent a picture—a screenshot of the movie ticket information. It was actually for the best viewing area, the one he had wanted to buy from the start.
"Ah!"
Shiga Taka was pleasantly surprised and immediately sent a message: "Makoto-chan, love you!"
Shiozawa Makoto replied with a shy emoji.
Since he already had tickets for the best viewing area, Shiga Taka stopped wasting his time.
He slacked off for a while longer, chatting with Shiozawa Makoto for a few more minutes. Realizing he had been in the restroom for quite some time, he reluctantly ended the chat, put his phone away, and left the restroom.
As soon as he returned to his desk, he heard someone next to him say, "Damn it! I didn't get tickets. I was hoping to buy two so I could invite Nanako-san to go see it, since it's a romance anime."
Another person sighed, "I didn't manage to get a ticket either, but there's nothing I can do about it. After all, I didn't snap it up the moment it was released, and that's an anime by Lin Tomohiko, produced by LSP."
"Lin Tomohiko? LSP? Are they famous?" another person asked.
"Hey, hey~"
Shiga Taka couldn't help himself. "You don't even know Lin Tomohiko and LSP? Seriously? Just look at the anime Lin Tomohiko has produced: [list of titles], each one is a classic, and they're all incredibly popular anime."
The person who had just mentioned Lin Tomohiko and LSP nodded, "Exactly, exactly. And that's just the anime he produced himself. The number of anime he has planned is even greater, including [list of titles]..."
"All of these are his anime?!" The person who hadn't known much about Lin Tomohiko was shocked.
Shiga Taka added, "And these are just the ones he produced or planned himself. The anime produced by L.S, the company he founded, are even more numerous, such as [title], and also [title] from this season."
"What! This company made that too? Isn't that super popular? I heard it's a worldwide hit."
"Yeah, it's pretty wild that you didn't know about such a popular person and animation company."
"It's not that I didn't know, I just don't watch that many anime, and I rarely pay attention to who produces them."
"By the way, these movie tickets are really hard to get this time. In comparison, the theatrical film released in February, and other animated films including those produced by LSP in the past, were so much easier to buy tickets for."
"I despair, I despair. I despair at this world where I can't buy movie tickets."
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