Ten o'clock.
Still no word from Aoi.
Yuta thought about it and decided to call her himself. He expected her to pick up quickly, but the phone just kept ringing.
That was strange.
Yuta's unease grew.
Then suddenly, there was a knock at his door.
Standing in the doorway was the very person he'd been looking for: Aoi Fuji.
"Aoi, why didn't you answer my call?"
"Why? Were you worried?"
"No, not at all."
Yuta denied it instantly.
Aoi stepped into the office and shut the door behind her. "The funding issue is resolved. Same as before, twelve million per episode. There's a promotional budget too. You can focus on production without worrying."
"That's great."
Yuta breathed a sigh of relief, then couldn't help asking. "How did you pull it off? Did your brother agree to hand you the funds?"
"How could he?" Aoi shook her head.
"Then you set up a production committee?" Yuta guessed.
"A production committee is for pooling money and spreading risk, but the problem right now isn't just about money."
Aoi explained, "If it were purely a funding issue, I could borrow from Seira and her group, take out loans, do crowdfunding, presales, any number of things. There'd be no need for a committee."
Yuta thought about it and realized she was right.
The real issue wasn't a lack of money. It was about disrupting Akira Fuji's plan and preventing Ryouga from replacing Aoi.
So the solution had to come from inside Arcane or from within the Fuji family itself. Otherwise, no matter how much funding they scraped together, it would be meaningless.
Sure enough, Aoi continued, "I went to my grandfather and asked him to intervene. He doesn't get involved in family matters much these days, but when he makes a decision, even my father has to accept it."
"Your grandfather agreed just like that?" Yuta was skeptical.
"Of course not," Aoi replied.
"So how did you get him to say yes?" Yuta was curious.
"Nothing special. I just knelt in front of him for five days straight. He felt bad and gave in." Aoi said it like it was nothing.
"..."
Yuta was at a loss for words.
Kneeling for five days straight. The woman was absolutely relentless.
And her grandfather was made of stone if it took five days to cave. If it were him, he'd have given in after five minutes.
After a pause, he said, "Aoi, that must have been really hard on you."
"It was nothing."
Aoi shook her head. "What comes next is the real challenge. My father was forced to agree to provide funding, but he attached a new condition. My brother will also be investing in an anime. When both shows air, ours has to beat his in every single metric, both ratings and sales. If we lose, I still have to leave Arcane and do as he says."
Yuta: "..."
People always said that daughters were their father's little treasures, their angels from a past life. But the relationship between Aoi and her father felt more like sworn enemies.
Why was he so determined to marry her off?
It made no sense.
Yuta figured that if he ever had a daughter someday, any guy who got too close would get told to take a hike. His daughter could stay single her whole life for all he cared. He would never go to such insane lengths to push her into a marriage.
Sometimes people really just couldn't understand each other.
Putting those thoughts aside, he asked, "When you say ratings, do you mean for a specific episode or the overall average? And for sales, is it the per-volume average or what?"
"Not a specific episode. Every single episode has to beat their counterpart. Same with sales. Every volume has to outsell theirs," Aoi answered.
Yuta frowned at that. "Do you know what kind of anime your brother is planning to invest in?"
"Not yet, but based on what my assistant has reported, he's probably going after the mecha genre. It's a proven hot property," Aoi said.
"Mecha..."
Yuta immediately felt the pressure.
When it came to making anime, genre selection was critical, because every genre had its own ceiling.
Some exceptional shows managed to break through that ceiling, but those were extremely rare.
Among all the genres, mecha probably had the highest ceiling of them all.
In other words, if you picked mecha and executed it well, it was very easy to outperform excellent anime in other genres on both popularity and sales.
If Ryouga had gone with a bishoujo anime, Yuta would have been supremely confident. But a mecha show? Clannad season two beating it across the board wouldn't be so simple.
Unfortunately, he was locked in to making Clannad. He couldn't just pivot to mecha just because the other side might.
"Don't put too much pressure on yourself," Aoi added. "Just do your best. Beyond that, we'll have to leave it to fate. If we lose, then I just wasn't meant for this. I've already fought and struggled as hard as I could. If it still doesn't work out, I'll have nothing to regret."
Yuta sighed but said nothing.
Aoi glanced around the office and changed the subject. "Didn't you say the proposal was done? Let me take a look."
"Sure." Yuta nodded.
He printed out a copy and handed it to her.
Aoi found a seat, took the proposal, and started reading through it carefully.
Unlike the first season's proposal, this draft contained far less detail despite also being a preliminary version.
Her eyes swept through the pages until she found the story summary section, where she slowed down and read closely.
The story picked up from the OVA special. The first portion was more of the same heartwarming, emotionally resonant vignettes. But then things took a baffling turn: midway through the season, the male lead graduated from high school while the female lead was held back a year. After that, the two of them would start a new family together.
The second half of the anime would tell the story of their new family, but the proposal only mentioned this in passing without explaining what kind of story it would be.
After reading the entire summary, Aoi's head was full of question marks.
If the proposal hadn't clearly been written before all their recent troubles, she would have suspected Yuta was trying to sabotage her.
Graduation and marriage in the middle of the anime? What was that about?
It felt like reading an urban fantasy novel where the protagonist suddenly gets isekai'd halfway through.
The whole thing struck her as incredibly risky. It gave her a completely different feeling from the first season's proposal.
"Shido, are you sure there's no problem with this?" Aoi couldn't help looking up.
"What problem could there be?" Yuta shot back.
"The second half of your story doesn't feel reliable to me. Maybe you should just do twelve episodes instead of twenty-two?" Aoi suggested.
"Absolutely not."
Yuta refused without a second thought. "Aoi, the reason I only glossed over the second half in the proposal is that a few sentences can't possibly capture what I'm going for. The plan is to use the second half to elevate the entire anime to another level. Only after that elevation does this show have a shot at becoming a classic among classics."
"A classic among classics?"
"Exactly."
"Then... alright. I'll trust you one more time."
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