At those words, Ken visibly froze. He tried to think of something to say in return, but nothing came to mind.
Because if you lined up the other rookie anime directors in the Japanese industry that summer beside Sora Kamakawa... the gap was downright humiliating. On paper, the Best New Anime Director award had five nominees. In reality, the other four probably did not even want to waste money on a ticket to Tokyo. It would just be throwing cash away.
After all, Natsume Yuujinchou was sitting at a 9.5 rating, ranked first in the annual score charts. The first two BD volumes had sold nearly forty thousand copies in their debut week alone. And Sora Kamakawa had been nominated because of that very work.
What other newcomer could possibly stand on the same stage as him?
...
The days continued to pass until the first-week sales for the third BD volume of Natsume Yuujinchou were finally released: 38,523 copies.
That result still placed it second among all third-volume BD sales for anime airing that season in Japan.
Only then did Sora truly begin sitting down and calculating how much Natsume Yuujinchou had earned.
Judging from the sales trend of the first three volumes, the final average would most likely settle at around 120,000 copies per volume. The series as a whole would receive six BD releases. After deducting manufacturing, distribution, promotion, and sales costs on the distributor's side... from BD sales alone, he was already looking at at least over twenty million yen in revenue share.
And that was only one slice of the cake.
There were figures, clothing, collaboration goods, domestic and overseas broadcast rights, and all kinds of licensed merchandise.
Even though the final episode of season one would not air until the next day, it was already possible to make a rough estimate of the series' total earnings. Most likely, the figure would exceed fifty million yen.
Compared to the initial investment, which had only been a little over ten million, that was already an extraordinary profit.
Under normal circumstances, an anime with this level of popularity would have been a premium production, backed by a budget of over thirty million yen and aired on one of the major national networks. The fact that Natsume Yuujinchou had started as a low-budget project on Tokushima TV and still reached this level of return... that was the kind of miracle you might only see once in ten years.
Once he had sorted all of that out in his head, Sora felt as if a great weight had suddenly lifted off him. His chest loosened. Even the air felt easier to breathe.
When he first arrived in this world, he had nothing. Debts. No resources. Ten million hanging over his head like a blade. And now, not only had he cleared it all, but the profits from Natsume Yuujinchou would continue coming in over the next few months. With this one anime alone, he could already be considered someone on the verge of building a real fortune.
So this is what it's like to make money in a world where copyright is actually respected, where otaku culture is strong, and fans don't hesitate to spend on what they love, he thought, unable to stop himself from marveling.
In his previous world, almost nobody would pay over a hundred units of local currency for a single anime BD. Plenty of people would not even subscribe to a streaming service to watch what they liked. There was always some free way around it, always some shared file floating around online, always some high-quality upload, and usually some dedicated fan subtitling group translating everything out of pure passion.
Once the attitude toward copyright changed, the commercial value of a work changed too.
And the difference was enormous.
...
The following night, it was only nine-thirty when the fans of Natsume Yuujinchou were already in an uproar on NatsuYume.
Just like what had happened when Akane no Sora ended the week before, the topic "Natsume Yuujinchou Ends Today" shot straight to the top of the trending rankings. In the anime section of the NatsuYume forum, one glance was enough to see that nearly every discussion was about the series.
"So it's really tonight..."
"I kind of want to cry. Does anyone know someone inside Yume Animation? Find out if there's going to be a second season!"
"My cousin works there as a key animator on Natsume Yuujinchou. She said that ever since the show wrapped, Director Sora Kamakawa has just been at the company watching anime and studying reports all day. Doesn't look like he's working on season two."
"Seriously? He's that relaxed?"
"Don't tell me this is bad news... did we support the show so much that the director made too much money and decided to coast now?"
The moment the idea of "coasting" appeared on the forum, the fandom panicked.
In the Japanese anime industry, it was not unusual for directors to receive a share of a project's profits. Some made one huge hit, then spent the next three or five years - sometimes even longer - doing absolutely nothing, living off the royalties and traveling around the country.
And in Sora's case, it was even worse.
He was not just someone entitled to profit shares.
He was the owner of Yume Animation itself.
If Sora could estimate the total profit of Natsume Yuujinchou based on BD sales and market conditions, then the fans could do the same. So a natural question rose in everyone's minds: what would an eighteen-year-old boy do after making tens of millions from a single anime?
If it were them, they would definitely go enjoy life.
Keep getting up early, working into the night, and destroying themselves nonstop to keep making anime?
That sounded ridiculous.
With that anxiety tightening around their hearts, the fans waited for the final episode of Natsume Yuujinchou's first season, episode thirteen.
At exactly ten o'clock, it began.
The next day, on December 30, the audience ratings for the final episode were released.
Since it was the conclusion of the series, the fans had shown up in force. Although the episode itself was relatively quiet and restrained, it still became the highest-rated episode of the entire run, closing at 4.88% across the four prefectures of Shikoku.
From 3.2% at its premiere to 4.88% at its finale.
Sitting in Sora's office, Sumire stared at the figures in silence. There was something distant in her expression, as if her thoughts were still drifting somewhere between the work they had just finished and the emptiness that came after it.
But she quickly collected herself. Opening a drawer in her desk, she took out a gift box and held it out to him.
"This is for you, Sora. Happy birthday... and congratulations on bringing Natsume Yuujinchou to such a perfect close."
She wore a faint smile as she spoke. Her pale, slender fingers cradled the gift carefully while her eyes stayed on him.
Birthday?
For a moment, Sora did not understand. His birthday was in July, wasn't it?
Then it hit him.
December 30 was the birthday of the body's original owner.
Which meant... today was his nineteenth birthday.
Sumire's gift was not anything extravagant. Just a fountain pen from a well-known Japanese brand. Even so, when Sora accepted it, he went still for a long moment, as though the strength had left his hand.
Across both his past life and this one, it was the first time anyone had ever given him a birthday present.
The emotion that welled up in his chest was gentle, but it lingered. It was not because of the gift's value. It was because someone had remembered.
And he knew very well that this present was not meant for the body's former owner. The relationship Sumire had with that person had never been especially close.
This was a gift for the Sora Kamakawa who existed now.
Beside them, Yumi Noriko only realized it was his birthday after seeing Sumire hand over her present. She hurried out, then returned not long after with a newly released digital camera.
As a content creator on NatsuYume, she naturally loved filming and editing far more than most people. Deep down, she also hoped Sora would start recording and editing more videos to keep his account active. In her eyes, leaving an audience of two million followers sitting idle was a complete waste.
Later that evening, during the wrap party for the Natsume Yuujinchou production team, Yumi casually let slip, between toasts, that it also happened to be Sora's birthday.
What was supposed to be nothing more than a celebration for the anime's conclusion instantly turned into a birthday party as well.
And then the inevitable happened.
Everyone gave whatever they had on hand. Keychains, perfume, lighters, flasks, wallets...
After a few drinks, Sora still had to go home with his arms full of gifts, too dazed to properly process any of it.
Even after collapsing onto his bed, he could not fall asleep for a long time.
Whether it was because he had celebrated a real birthday for the first time in this life, or because Natsume Yuujinchou's first season had finally, truly come to an end... a strange melancholy quietly spread through him.
That night, Yumi Noriko's account posted a video revealing that the Natsume Yuujinchou wrap party had somehow turned into Sora's birthday party. In just a few hours, it surpassed a million views and became a hot topic among the series' fans.
In the early hours of the following morning, Sora boarded the flight he had booked in advance and left Tokushima alone, heading for Tokyo.
Before noon, he had already arrived in Japan's largest city, the economic heart of the country.
Honestly, there was not much for him to marvel at. In his previous life, he had also just been another ordinary worker in a major city. After seeing the same kind of urban landscape too many times, a certain numbness naturally set in. Skyscrapers, broad avenues, packed stations - none of it still had the power to amaze him.
What did surprise him, however, was that the moment he stepped off the plane, a staff member from the Tokyo Anime Festival was already waiting for him with a sign.
"You're Sora Kamakawa-sensei, correct? I'm Rei Hasegawa from the festival staff. Please come with us."
The woman looked to be in her thirties, dressed in neat business attire, and approached with a professional but friendly smile.
It was only when he followed her outside the airport, surrounded along the way by security personnel, that Sora truly understood how passionate the fans had become.
Outside, at least a hundred Natsume Yuujinchou fans were waiting with posters of the series' characters in their hands. The instant they spotted him, they surged forward in near-chaotic excitement, asking for autographs. Mixed in among them were several reporters.
"Director Sora, the award tonight is definitely yours, right?"
"Sora-sensei, when is season two of Natsume Yuujinchou coming out?"
"Director Sora, do you already have plans for your next work?"
"Director Sora... what are your thoughts on Maki's anime getting completely crushed this season?"
Sora had never been good at dealing with this sort of thing, but the staff assigned to receive him were clearly experienced. With practiced efficiency, they blocked most of the crowd and got him out of there before he could be swallowed up by the chaos.
Before he really knew what was happening, he was already inside a car, still a little dazed, being driven by Rei Hasegawa to the awards venue - a musical theater that had been temporarily remodeled for the event.
There, makeup artists who had already been waiting for him made a few minor adjustments to his appearance, fixing his hair, softening the signs of fatigue, and making sure he looked presentable enough.
After all, in only a few hours, Sora would step onto that stage as one of the night's nominees. And the ceremony would be broadcast live across Tokyo's four major television networks.
Under ordinary circumstances, the organizing committee would never treat a nominee with this much care.
But Sora was not an ordinary nominee.
That season, he was one of the most talked-about names in the Japanese anime industry. The organizers would obviously give him plenty of screen time to boost the ceremony's ratings. And thinking of it that way, it was only natural for them to pay extra attention to that young genius director - talented, inexperienced, and standing alone in Tokyo.
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