To be honest, Alex really was pleased by the praise.
Hearing compliments from the author of The Hidden Corner and from Teacher Hugo genuinely put him in a good mood. Those were people with real substance, people whose names carried weight because of what they had created with their own hands. Compared to them, Alex knew better than anyone that his path had been far less ordinary. So when recognition came from people like that, it was hard not to feel a little satisfaction.
Still, satisfaction was one thing.
Being fully accepted at the very top of the industry was something else entirely.
At the moment, among the three most famous directors in Ishtar, two still clearly disliked him. That much had never changed. In fact, an interview clip had been circulating online for days, and the view count was climbing fast.
The reporter had asked a very direct question.
"What do you think of Alex's Death Note?"
The veteran director's face darkened instantly. He was already the sort of man whose expression tended to look hostile even when he was calm, but now he looked outright miserable. He sat there in silence for several long seconds, as if each word had to be dragged out of him by force. In the end, he managed to squeeze out a stiff, reluctant answer.
"The script is decent. The acting is decent too... it's a qualified commercial film. It just lacks a bit of artistry."
That was as far as he could go without choking on his own pride.
After all, the 9.8 rating was right there for everyone to see. So was the overseas box office of more than 800 million dollars. He could sneer, he could downplay it, he could wrap the insult in the language of "art," but he could not call it a bad film. Not in front of numbers like that. Not without looking like he thought the entire audience was blind.
Unfortunately for him, the reporter had no intention of letting the matter rest.
"Do you think your next film can reach that level?"
That single question nearly killed the conversation on the spot.
If he said no, he would be admitting in public that he was inferior to Alex.
If he said yes... even he didn't believe it.
Eight hundred million dollars.
More than five billion in total box office.
Those numbers were monstrous. They belonged to a scale so absurd it barely felt real. For one fleeting moment, he even had the urge to go home and add up the total box office of every film he had ever made, just to see whether all of them combined could even brush against a figure like that.
Deep down, he already knew the answer.
And honestly, the reactions from industry insiders had been relatively restrained.
Alex's fans, on the other hand, had gone completely insane.
They were louder than anyone else, more arrogant than anyone else, and more shameless in victory than anyone else. The way they were acting was so over the top that even Alex found it a little familiar.
"Alex is the goddamn savior of Ishtar cinema!"
"In the Ishton entertainment world, if Alex says you didn't hear it, then you didn't hear it! Do it again!"
"You want to trash Alex? Tell your favorite to make a film that crosses five billion first, then come back and talk!"
Maybe people really did become like the idols they worshiped.
Because that taste for showing off, for humiliating others in public, for treating every victory like a chance to step on someone's face - his fans had learned all of it perfectly.
Alex saw the uproar, of course.
And instead of slowing down, he pressed harder.
While the heat around his name was still at its peak, he released the full set of promotional stills for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders in one move.
This time, he did not just release character images.
He released the character names and the Stands too.
The first still alone was enough to blow up the entire internet.
Behind him, Star Platinum drove forward with a storm of fists, all raw force and overwhelming pressure. In front, Jotaro Kujo stood with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand pointing ahead, his body locked into that signature JoJo pose that seemed to radiate impossible amounts of swagger. It was bold, aggressive, theatrical, and absurdly cool.
Alex as Jotaro Kujo.
The next image showed Noriaki Kakyoin.
His hand was raised with quiet precision, his fingers held in a composed, unmistakable gesture near his face, while Hierophant Green loomed behind him like an elegant and dangerous extension of his will. There was something refined about the whole image, but also something strange, almost unnerving.
Henry as Noriaki Kakyoin.
Then came Jean Pierre Polnareff, one arm slashing forward in a sharp, dramatic line while Silver Chariot stood at his back with rapier drawn, ready to pierce straight through whatever stood in its path.
And then another.
And another.
Pose after pose.
Character after character.
Stand after Stand.
Every image carried that unmistakable JoJo energy, that bizarre blend of style, excess, confidence, and madness that made it feel unlike anything else on the market.
But in the end, it was the final still that truly sent everyone over the edge.
In that image, Alex was bare-chested.
His physique looked less like something built in a gym and more like something carved by an obsessive sculptor from some ancient golden age. Every line of muscle was sharply defined, every proportion absurdly precise, as if his body had been designed according to an ideal rather than grown naturally. The star-shaped birthmark on his shoulder stood out starkly beneath his blond hair. One hand was slightly raised. His head was turned halfway. And with a single eye, he stared straight into the camera with a pressure so intense it felt almost violent.
It was not merely handsome.
It was oppressive.
Alex as DIO.
That one image alone detonated the discussion.
Alex's popularity in Ishtar had already reached a ridiculous height thanks to the online release of Death Note. At this point, if he claimed second place, no one would dare claim first. So when that set of stills was posted, the reaction was immediate and explosive.
"What the hell? Are those muscles even real?"
"If it were some other actor, I'd believe padding. But Alex? No way."
"He's playing two roles? That's insane."
"The makeup team went crazy. If I hadn't looked closely, I wouldn't have noticed Jotaro and DIO were the same person."
"What are those things behind the characters supposed to be?"
"So Hamon is gone and now there's something new?"
"Please, for the love of God, go film Bleach Season 3 and the second half of Death Note already!"
"Okay, fine, Death Note won me over, but I still don't really care about JoJo."
"It's a series, though. I'll watch it. I want to see what kind of madness he came up with this time."
The discussions spread everywhere.
Even though Alex had already stated publicly on Weibo that Stardust Crusaders could still be understood even if viewers had not watched the first two parts, plenty of people went back to catch up on Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency anyway.
There was a reason for that.
Death Note had raised the audience's confidence in Alex to a completely different level. A lot of people had become convinced that if he was choosing to release this new project before Bleach Season 3 and before the second half of Death Note, then there had to be a reason.
So even viewers who had never cared much for JoJo before decided to binge the earlier arcs first.
And after finishing them, many were surprised by their own reaction.
It was... unexpectedly good.
JoJo did not have Bleach's razor-sharp coolness, nor did it have the suffocating intellectual warfare of Death Note. But it had something else, something weirdly magnetic.
It was bizarre.
It was stylish.
It was completely unhinged in a way that somehow worked.
Especially once people saw those poses that seemed to violate every law of human anatomy, and heard those lines that should have sounded ridiculous but somehow came off incredibly compelling instead. It gave viewers this almost irresistible urge to imitate it. To try the poses. To copy the attitude. To stand in front of a mirror and see whether they could capture even a fraction of that absurd charisma.
And while the internet was still fighting over JoJo, Alex finally returned to Ishtar.
The moment word got out, quite a few acquaintances sent messages saying they wanted to throw him a welcome-back dinner, host a gathering, or arrange something to celebrate his return.
Alex turned every single one of them down.
He did not have the time to waste on that kind of thing.
Still, one thing did catch his attention.
The group chat for the Bleach cast suddenly became lively with a very interesting exchange.
Momo: Seems like someone's new drama is going head-to-head with our Director Alex's release. That's some confidence. @Mark
Mark: Sister, please stop making fun of me. Sabrina is already thinking about whether we should move the release date. I'm crying here.
Jasper Quin: To be fair, it's a new drama starring you, Rebeca Verne, and Bruce Walts. Maybe you can put up a fight.
Peter: Fight my ass. That so-called self-discipline king spends all day marketing hard work and discipline online, but his Ishton still sounds worse than mine.
Yasmim Banner: You're just jealous his body looks better than yours, kid.
When Alex entered the chat and scrolled through the conversation, he quickly understood what was going on.
Aurora Entertainment had a new drama scheduled for the exact same release window as Stardust Crusaders.
It starred Mark, Rebeca Verne, and Bruce Walts.
It would have been a stretch to call it a monstrous lineup, but not by much. All three leads were basically first-tier actors. Under normal circumstances, that would have been more than enough to make the project one of the biggest releases in its slot.
Alex read through the messages in silence, then casually typed a reply.
"It's fine. Let's release them together and have some fun."
The moment that message appeared, Mark practically put on a mask of suffering.
He personally thought their drama was pretty good.
He really did.
But going up against Alex right now...
That feeling was too brutal to describe in ordinary words.
It was like finishing the beginner questline, stepping out of the starter village full of confidence, and immediately running into a level 999 boss before you had even figured out how the real world worked.
That was exactly what Alex felt like now.
A monster completely outside the normal scale.
One month later, under the eager attention of die-hard JoJo fans and the even larger crowd of Bleach fans, Death Note fans, and ordinary spectators who had simply come to watch the chaos unfold, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders finally premiered.
At the same time, another project also went live.
A period drama from Aurora Entertainment, starring Mark, Rebeca Verne, and Bruce Walts, premiered in the exact same window.
When that news spread, the fanbases of all three actors reacted with a strange and complicated mood.
It was not exactly anger.
It was not exactly panic either.
It was more like the numb disbelief of people staring at a decision and wondering whether the people behind it had completely lost their minds.
Was Aurora Entertainment stupid?
Did they really think it was a good idea to launch a drama in the same slot as Alex's new series?
When Emily heard about it, she cut straight to the heart of the matter.
"Probably because it wasn't Bleach, so they thought they could rub up against the hype and get away with it."
The comment was merciless.
And precisely because of that, it felt true.
That was how the entire industry saw Alex now.
Not just as another successful director.
But as a force big enough to warp the entire market simply by showing up.