Starting from late October, Jing Yu entered a nonstop schedule, working on two sets back-to-back.
However, at the '5 Centimeters per Second' set, his main task wasn't acting, but supervision.
Jing Yu was well aware that the original animated version of '5 Centimeters per Second' relied more on its visuals and music than on its plot.
While the film was quite famous in his past life, if one were to rate it a 9 out of 10, Jing Yu believed 4 points came from the visuals, 3 from the music, and only 2 from the story.
Of course, that's not to say the story was bad—just that the other aspects were so outstanding that the narrative felt comparatively thin.
Therefore, when filming this project, Jing Yu placed extra emphasis on visual presentation. He wouldn't cut corners by shooting entirely on soundstages; if location shooting were needed, he'd make sure the crew did it properly.
As a result, the '5 Centimeters per Second' production was split into several sub-teams. Some focused on filming the characters, while others scouted around the Modo area, searching for beautiful locations that matched the script's descriptions—prepping ahead for later shoots.
In the crew, the girl playing the middle school version of Akari Shinohara was named Qin Ming. She was just fourteen, cute and pretty, with a lively personality. She often brought the script to Jing Yu to discuss how to perform certain scenes.
As for the boy playing the middle school version of Takaki Toono, his name was Zhang Xu, and he was even younger, only thirteen.
He was more of a homebody. Unless it was time to film, he'd be off to the side playing online Go on his phone. If he saw that Jing Yu was free, he'd come over and ask questions about the game.
After all, his grandfather had once been a professional Go player in Great Zhou. When he first joined the crew, he immediately asked Jing Yu for a ton of autographs.
Honestly, after spending a week or two with the two young actors, Jing Yu was pretty satisfied.
At their age, it was unrealistic to expect award-winning performances, but they weren't bad either—just needed more retakes than usual.
"How is it? Feeling alright about their performances?" Director Cheng Lie came over, doing his routine check-in with Jing Yu.
Jing Yu was the original creator of this film. If he wasn't satisfied with the two leads, Cheng Lie would have to consider switching them out.
Jing Yu thought for a moment, then nodded.
"They're fine."
There's no such thing as perfection in this world. Though Jing Yu had mild perfectionist tendencies, he wouldn't obsess over trivial details.
Live-action adaptations would always differ in tone from their anime origins. Jing Yu wasn't aiming for a full anime aesthetic in live action, but rather to strike a balance—capturing the spirit of animation without straying too far from realism.
Based on how things were shaping up in the first two weeks of filming, he was fairly satisfied.
The only issue was with location scouting.
Anime-style settings were hard to find in the real world. The crew scoured the internet and visited real sites every day, sending Jing Yu hundreds of photos from around the country—but very few met his standards.
"How's the release schedule looking?" Jing Yu asked in return.
"Not bad. It's October now, and the later parts of this film aren't too difficult to shoot. So there's a slot open post–Chinese New Year, around May. The next best option is the summer window when 'Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal' drops. Given the success of our previous projects, and not just with Yuzhou Distribution—lots of companies are interested in releasing '5 Centimeters per Second'," said Cheng Lie, getting visibly excited.
"Mm." Jing Yu nodded.
"And about the movie releases on Qingyun Video—the platform team said that since we haven't yet released the DVDs for 'Love Letter' and 'Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal', if we stream them on their site first, it'll be the only place to watch them. They're willing to heavily promote both films as flagship titles, and even offered to shift the revenue split from 50-50 to 60-40 in our favor."
"That's acceptable." Jing Yu nodded after a bit of thought.
"But…"
Jing Yu paused mid-sentence.
He definitely believed in the future of streaming platforms in Great Zhou. These things could evolve incredibly fast. In his past life, Douyin had grown from launch to a trillion-yuan market cap in just three to four years, challenging even Tencent's WeChat empire.
Qingyun Video, under Qingyun Group, could very well be one of those platforms. If it really was the "chosen one," its influence might surpass even the top three TV stations in a few years.
"But what?" Cheng Lie asked.
"If we're planning to build a solid relationship with them, we should go all in. For 'Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal' and 'Love Letter', we can include a bit more content on the Qingyun platform."
"What do you mean?" Cheng Lie blinked.
"We can shoot a few extra scenes in our spare time—call it bonus content. It doesn't need to be long, just a few minutes. It should attract fans who've already watched the theatrical versions."
"Special version cuts?" Cheng Lie's eyes lit up.
Jing Yu remained calm. This tactic was commonplace in anime. Whether it was manga or anime, Blu-ray releases often included extras to boost sales.
And for 'Rurouni Kenshin' and 'Love Letter', adding content would be easy—both the original manga and novel still had plenty of untapped material.
Besides, they still had plenty of unused footage from both films' production—scenes that were cut from the theatrical release. If they wanted to do this, it could be done quickly.
Of course, the reason Jing Yu was willing to go to this much trouble was also because he saw this as an experiment—to gauge the potential of these streaming platforms. If it went well…
Then his future partnerships wouldn't be limited to TV stations.
"Sounds good!"
Cheng Lie was a man of action. Once Jing Yu set the direction, he immediately followed up with further planning.
A few days passed quickly.
While fans were still anxiously waiting for the fourth episode of 'Kimi ni Todoke'...
On Saturday, Qingyun Video made a major announcement:
Three weeks from now, on November 15th, 'Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal' and 'Love Letter' will both have their exclusive online premieres on Qingyun Video.
As soon as the news dropped—
It triggered a wave of discussion among Jing Yu's fanbase.
After all, many fans of both films had been eagerly waiting for the high-definition DVD release, but now they were debuting on a streaming site instead?
Who could've seen that coming?
Even more shocked were those in the industry.
Whether in TV drama or film, everyone was stunned when they saw the news.
Because 'Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal' and 'Love Letter' were both big titles. If their DVDs were sold as usual, the expected revenue would be in the tens of millions—a stable, guaranteed return.
But Jing Yu was actually releasing them online before the DVDs?
That's a bold move!