Chapter 226 225
When the ending theme of Attack on Titan began to play, the image of Eren, his eyes brimming with hatred and tears as he was torn from Reiner's grasp after the transformation, remained branded into the memory of Japanese fans like a blade pressed hot against the chest.
The visual composition of that episode was almost absurd in its refinement. The soundtrack seemed to climb up the spine, raising goosebumps before the audience even realized it, while the story advanced through unexpected twists woven with such meticulous detail that, in hindsight, everything felt as though it had been there from the very beginning.
The scene in which Reiner and Bertholdt revealed their true identities struck almost every fan watching Attack on Titan on television. It was not merely a plot twist.
It was a betrayal.
"Guys, I'm furious after watching that! Seriously, it feels like Reiner himself betrayed me. I'm unbelievably angry!"
"Reiner is the Armored Titan... I still can't process it. Over the last two episodes, I had actually started liking him, and now it feels like I've been stabbed in the back by a character I trusted."
"Honestly, I thought something was strange back in the first season. Nobody knew exactly where Eren was inside the forest, so how did the Female Titan figure out his location after fighting Armin and Reiner? I thought she had read their lips and picked up something from their conversation. I never imagined Reiner had carved the information into her palm during the fight!"
"They're all award-winning actors. We, the audience, were just rookies trying to keep up."
"Reiner, Bertholdt, Ymir, Annie, Eren... I never imagined that tiny group of trainees would have so many intelligent Titans hidden among them. Who could have understood that? When I watched episodes two and three of the first season of Attack on Titan, I thought they were just a bunch of homeless kids trying to survive being hunted by Titans."
"Sora, that damned old fox... what an insane script. It's been half an hour since the episode ended, and I still haven't calmed down."
"I can't even imagine how the overseas audience is going to react when this episode airs abroad in four hours."
"That shameless old thief really is incredible. His works aren't only popular in Japan; he has a massive fanbase overseas too. It feels like anime fans all over the world are following the same series at the same time."
"This is amazing! If Attack on Titan keeps going at this pace, it's definitely going to become legendary!"
"It's already a masterpiece! Tonight's episode was insane, wasn't it? That was the most unbelievable anime experience I've had in the last ten years. It even surpassed that massive twist at the end of Steins;Gate."
"Don't underestimate me. I love Attack on Titan too, but Steins;Gate is still the pinnacle in my heart. No anime can surpass it."
"The most impactful episode? For me, it's still Nagisa Furukawa's return in Clannad."
"I still think Sora's best anime is Re:Zero."
"But judging by audience ratings, isn't Attack on Titan his strongest work?"
"Can the current Kantoku Sora really be compared to the old Sora, who had to fight desperately just to build his reputation? After he became famous, isn't it only natural that Attack on Titan's ratings would be higher than his earlier works? Ratings reflect both the quality of the work and the strength of the name behind it, but they don't represent artistic quality in absolute terms."
"Forget it. Let's stop arguing over which of Sora's works is the strongest. That kind of thing comes down entirely to personal taste, and there's no point fighting over it. But considering the current situation, Attack on Titan... has an enormous chance of exploding across Japan and growing into a global phenomenon. In terms of impact and achievement, it will probably surpass every previous work by Sora."
Within just a few hours of the sixth episode of Attack on Titan's second season ending, discussions about the series had already spread across the Japanese internet like fire through dry grass.
Soon after, the international broadcast began on several overseas television stations as well.
Debates about Eren, the Colossal Titan, and the Armored Titan flooded anime communities everywhere. On forums, social media platforms, and chat rooms, fans from different countries repeated the same questions, the same theories, the same explosions of disbelief.
The animation industry had already reached the world's major economic centers, but on that night, it felt as though borders had disappeared. Waves of emotional value from every corner of the planet converged into Sora's system.
Since Attack on Titan had begun airing on foreign television stations, as well as on affiliated networks in Tokushima, the total emotional points accumulated by Sora had already surpassed ten billion.
He had never been this wealthy before.
That night, alone in his villa, Sora stood before the window, gazing at the full moon suspended over the silent sky of Tokushima. For a brief moment, even he could not suppress the agitation rising in his chest.
The main purpose behind promoting Attack on Titan to television stations around the world had never been merely to earn more money.
The real reason Sora had poured so much effort into it was emotional value.
After reflecting for a while, he immersed himself in the space of the system.
As for extremely popular works capable of generating billions of emotional points with ease, such as Dead Fire Dragon, Sora still had no concrete plan.
Although he could recover those works chapter by chapter, he still had to consider whether the company's current capacity for intellectual property development was truly strong enough. More importantly, he needed to know whether he could transform those works, in this world, into global-level brands on the same scale they had reached in his previous life.
Without that ability, forcing an exchange and dumping the content into the market would only be a waste of resources.
But now that he had such a vast surplus of emotional points, there was no reason to let them sit unused either.
The animation production department of Yume Animation already had more than five hundred employees. After part of the staff completed the preliminary work for Battle of the Twin Cities and Attack on Titan, many animators were temporarily left without major core assignments and could use that interval to prepare the foundations for other projects.
Even so, considering issues of quality and reputation, Sora had no intention of making the company produce three full-length television anime series at the same time. Therefore, if he truly wanted to make use of those billions of emotional points...
His primary target could only be the film industry.
Sora's two previous films, 5 Centimeters Per Second and Your Name, had both achieved excellent box office results in Japan.
For him, releasing one animated film every one or two years was also a strategic necessity.
It would allow him to maintain his presence and influence in the film circuit, preventing the public from associating him only with television series.
His gaze settled on one of the works displayed within the system.
Although the exchange cost of nine hundred million was extremely high, Sora did not hesitate for long.
He spent an immense amount of emotional points and exchanged them for Spirited Away.
Up to that point, Sora had essentially reproduced most of Makoto Shinkai's major works.
But in the world of Japanese animated films, no one could deny that Hayao Miyazaki stood on a level above Makoto Shinkai.
Of course, Sora had already considered exchanging for foreign animated films he had stored in his memories from his previous life, such as Coco, WALL-E, Frozen, and Toy Story, using them to further open the international market.
The problem was that most of his production team consisted of animators specialized in 2D animation.
In the past, Sora's team still had not possessed enough capability to produce 3D animated feature films at the European and North American standard.
Moreover, recruiting an entire elite 3D animation team from overseas would not be simple. Those professionals had families, lives established in their own countries, and in many cases, enormous breach-of-contract penalties. Even though Sora had plenty of money, there was no need to spend it so recklessly.
If he truly wanted to develop in the field of 3D animation, he would have to start from scratch. It would be just like when he founded Yume Animation: attracting talent little by little, scouting promising professionals from major studios, and building a solid team over the course of several years.
For that reason, Sora decided to set those projects aside for the time being and turned his attention back to Hayao Miyazaki's body of work.
Spirited Away cost nine hundred million points.
And, riding that momentum, Sora spent another two hundred million to exchange for Castle in the Sky.
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