The moment the U-Bunny interview ended, the reactions spread everywhere almost instantly, though amusingly the first wave of discussion was not even about ZEPS 4 itself. Instead, people became obsessed with how completely different Zaboru behaved whenever Ayumi was the person interviewing him. Viewers had seen Zaboru appear alongside famous actresses, singers, models, television hosts, game developers, athletes, and plenty of beautiful women over the years, yet he almost never flirted seriously with any of them. He joked, teased, laughed, occasionally embarrassed the interviewer, and treated almost everyone casually, but there had always been a clear distance. Even when tabloids tried to manufacture rumors around him, Zaboru's behavior had usually made those stories difficult to believe because he simply never seemed genuinely interested. Apparently there was one very obvious exception to that rule: his wife.
During the livestream, Zaboru had openly called Ayumi "my love," praised her intelligence, shamelessly complimented her in the middle of technical discussions, and then exposed the fact that she casually called him "Zabo" when the nickname accidentally slipped from her mouth. Ayumi's embarrassed expression only made the moment worse. She had tried to maintain the atmosphere of a professional interview, but Zaboru clearly had no intention of helping her. The moment she slipped and said "Zabo—," his eyes immediately lit up, and before Ayumi could recover, he looked directly into the camera and proudly announced, "For the record, that's how she calls me with love, heheheh."
Ayumi had stared at him with the expression of a woman seriously reconsidering whether inviting her own husband onto her channel had been a good idea.
Zaboru, naturally, looked delighted with himself.
That tiny moment alone was clipped and reposted thousands of times within minutes.
Naturally, people immediately lost their minds.
On ZAGE Forum, a discussion originally titled U-BUNNY ZEPS 4 INTERVIEW DISCUSSION somehow became mostly about their marriage within twenty minutes. The first several pages had actually contained serious conversations about digital distribution, physical games, memory architecture, ZEPS 4's hardware philosophy, and the future of game development. Then somebody mentioned the "Zabo" nickname, and the entire thread collapsed into chaos.
FlameLord: "This bastard owns ZAGE, looks like that, makes games, sings in Zaraki AND comes home to a wife who understands what he loves about video games. Some people are playing life on Easy Mode."
CORTOCORTO: "Ayumi discussing unified memory with her husband while pregnant with twins is somehow more romantic than every romance movie I watched."
Croco-Boy: "When she accidentally said 'Zabo' I closed the browser. I have witnessed enough happiness today."
LegenZZAGE: "Brother didn't even hesitate. He immediately exposed the private nickname to millions of viewers. Zaboru has no survival instinct."
HIGHtune: "Ayumi-san looked like she wanted to throw the microphone at him."
Bibiloc: "She won't. She loves the idiot."
Another user replied that the funniest part was how obvious Zaboru's expression changed whenever Ayumi asked him a question. With Kojima and Carmack, he had been playful but focused. With journalists, he normally controlled the conversation carefully. With Ayumi, however, he occasionally looked less like the owner of ZAGE and more like a husband who had temporarily forgotten millions of people were watching.
AmatsuKE: "The man can negotiate billion-yen deals without blinking but his wife asks one intelligent question and suddenly he's like 'smart, beautiful, captured my heart.'"
FlameLord: "His weakness has been discovered."
HIGHtune: "Final Boss mechanic: deploy Ayumi."
That joke naturally created another series of increasingly stupid comments about Ayumi being Zaboru's hidden boss battle, secret weakness, or "critical emotional damage multiplier." Someone even edited a fake RPG status screen showing Zaboru with absurdly high statistics everywhere except a single vulnerability labeled WIFE.
A few of Zaboru's female fans reacted with obviously exaggerated heartbreak, while other users immediately mocked them. Some jokingly complained that Ayumi had already "won too hard," while others pretended they had been personally betrayed by Zaboru being happily married. One thread briefly appeared titled ZABORU PLEASE STOP BEING ROMANTIC I AM TRYING TO SUPPORT YOUR CONSOLE, though nobody could tell whether the original poster was serious.
Then LivingLegends99 posted one simple comment: "Ladies, she joined his party before ZAGE even existed. You missed the tutorial."
The sentence spread surprisingly quickly because it perfectly summarized the problem.
Ayumi had known Zaboru from high school. She had been beside him during the old ZAS era, before the giant ZAGE Tower, before the global subsidiaries, before Steam, YouTube, Blue-Ray, ZEPS dominance, Marvel, Disney, and everything else people now associated with the Renkonan name. She had learned game development from him while both of them were still young, had helped during the earliest stages of his career, confessed first because Zaboru had apparently been too dense to notice what she felt, married him long before he became one of the most powerful businessmen in the world, had two children with him, and was now expecting twins.
She had quite literally been there before nearly everything.
Once users started thinking about it that way, the entire discussion shifted from joking jealousy into something almost strangely wholesome. Zaboru's relationship with Ayumi did not look like the typical story people imagined when they thought about an absurdly wealthy celebrity businessman marrying someone after becoming successful. Ayumi had been there while he was still building everything. She had known the younger, far less powerful version of him first.
That made the jokes even worse.
CORTOCORTO: "She didn't marry the CEO. She married the weird game nerd before he evolved."
Another user pointed out that Ayumi herself was hardly some passive wife standing beside a famous husband. She was a developer in her own right, had her own projects, understood technology well enough to genuinely challenge Zaboru during conversations, and clearly had no problem disagreeing with him. That detail became important because it explained why the interview felt different. Zaboru was not simply flirting with Ayumi because she was his wife. He visibly enjoyed talking to her because she actually understood the subjects he cared about.
Eventually, however, the conversation moved toward something unexpectedly emotional. Zaboru's comments about retirement had left a stronger impression than he probably intended. During the interview he had casually explained that one day, when he was old, he wanted to step away from ZAGE, stop worrying about running one of the world's largest companies, spend more time with Ayumi, his children and future grandchildren, and simply become an old gamer waiting excitedly for whatever new games younger developers created.
It was a perfectly normal dream.
The internet treated it like a national emergency.
Within hours, several discussion threads appeared with titles such as WHAT HAPPENS TO ZAGE AFTER ZABORU!?, DO NOT RETIRE, and WHO BECOMES CEO AFTER HIM!? This was particularly absurd because Zaboru was only twenty-seven years old. He was currently developing games, preparing a new console launch, managing a giant company, raising two children, expecting twins, performing music, and apparently still had enough energy to annoy Ayumi on livestream. There was absolutely no indication that he intended to retire anytime remotely soon.
That did not stop Miguel Katayuya.
Naturally, Toro Kami made everything worse.
By that evening, Miguel uploaded a video titled:
ZABORU WILL RETIRE!? THE FUTURE OF ZAGE WITHOUT HIM!?
The thumbnail showed an edited elderly Zaboru walking dramatically toward a sunset while Miguel screamed in the foreground, both hands gripping the sides of his head as if the entire video-game industry had just collapsed behind him. Someone had even edited ZAGE Tower into the background with dark clouds above it, making the thumbnail look less like a discussion video and more like the end of civilization.
The actual video was somehow even more ridiculous. "GUYS! LISTEN! ZABORU-SAMA SAID THAT ONE DAY HE WILL RETIRE!" Miguel shouted while aggressively pointing toward a paused image from the U-Bunny interview. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS!? Imagine thirty years—twenty years—NO! FIVE YEARS FROM NOW!! Zaboru-sama suddenly says, 'Okay guys, I'm tired, bye-bye!' Then some boring businessman becomes CEO! Suddenly ZAGE stops making crazy games! Everything becomes safe! Everything becomes corporate! NOOOOO!"
He grabbed his head dramatically and leaned so close toward the camera that only half of his face remained visible. "Imagine opening ZAGE Forum when we are old and seeing some generic game getting hyped because it has slightly better graphics! Imagine every game having twelve paid editions! STANDARD! DELUXE! ULTRA! SUPER ULTRA! FOUNDER! EXECUTIVE! PLEASE-GIVE-US-MORE-MONEY EDITION!" Miguel slammed both hands against his desk. "Imagine ZABO-man disappearing! Imagine developers becoming scared to make weird games! Imagine nobody saying 'You Are Very Cool' anymore! Imagine ZAGE becoming NORMAL!"
He froze.
Then his eyes widened in horror.
"Normal ZAGE…"
Miguel slowly shook his head.
"No."
He stood dramatically from his chair. "I refuse."
Then he tripped backward and vanished completely from the camera.
The video continued recording an empty chair for several seconds. Somewhere off-screen, viewers could hear something fall over, followed by Miguel shouting, "I'M FINE!"
A moment later he suddenly climbed back into frame, hair slightly messed up, pointed directly toward the camera, and screamed, "I REFUSE THIS FUTURE!"
Despite the entire video being obviously exaggerated, it received a huge number of views. Some people watched because they genuinely wanted to discuss ZAGE's future, while many others simply wanted to see what ridiculous disaster Miguel had imagined this time. Somehow, Zaboru's retirement—which theoretically might not happen for decades—became another surprisingly serious discussion.
AmatsuKE: "Bro is 27. Why are we planning his funeral?"
Croco-Boy: "Toro Kami just skipped forty years of story progression."
Grogoku: "Zaboru: 'Someday when I'm old.' Internet: 'HE'S LEAVING TOMORROW.'"
Bibiloc: "Miguel reduced 'future retirement' into 'five years maximum' in less than ten seconds."
CORTOCORTO: "The funniest part is Zaboru probably hasn't even decided what he's eating for dinner and this forum is discussing his successor."
HIGHtune: "Normal ZAGE sounds more terrifying than Evil ZAGE."
The jokes continued, but underneath them there was also a genuine concern that many fans had never seriously thought about before. ZAGE had become so closely associated with Zaboru's personality that imagining the company without him felt strangely difficult. He was not merely an executive whose name appeared at the bottom of corporate statements. He constantly appeared beside developers, discussed game design publicly, joined promotional videos, performed bizarre marketing stunts, personally designed games and hardware concepts, challenged teams directly, and somehow turned himself into part of ZAGE's identity.
People did not simply associate ZAGE with its logo.
They associated it with Zaboru.
That was why even a distant hypothetical retirement could make some fans uncomfortable. ZAGE without him would still possess thousands of talented developers, powerful studios, enormous technology, and experienced leadership—but would it still feel like ZAGE?
That question lingered much longer than Miguel's screaming.
But the retirement discussion eventually faded because gamers had a far more immediate problem.
The price.
After all the reveals, they still did not know how much ZEPS 4 actually cost.
That fact was beginning to feel almost insulting.
Players now knew about the 3.4 GHz Raijin processor, four cores and eight hardware threads, Amaterasu GPU, 768 MB of unified GDDR3 memory, 44.8 GB/s memory bandwidth, Blue-Ray discs reaching 25 or 50 GB, internal hard drives, ZAGE Network, online multiplayer, ZAGE ID, friends, messaging, voice chat, Trophys, Z-Store, backward compatibility, Z-Remote motion controls, built-in media functions, YouTube, ZAGE Forum integration, and a launch lineup filled with games that looked absurdly advanced.
But the one number everyone actually needed remained secret.
People began calculating it themselves.
Some predicted around ¥60,000. Others believed ¥70,000 was more realistic considering the hardware. A few pessimistic users believed ZAGE might go above ¥80,000, especially because equivalent computer hardware would cost far more. Meanwhile, long-time ZAGE fans argued that Zaboru had always prioritized growing the ecosystem and would probably accept very small hardware profits if software sales compensated for it.
The forum became a strange mixture of technical analysis and financial panic.
CORTOCORTO: "I have ¥50,000 prepared. If it costs more, February becomes rice-and-water month."
LivingLegends99: "You still need money for games, genius."
CORTOCORTO: "…I forgot."
LegenZZAGE: "This man prepared for the final boss and forgot Phase Two."
Another user had apparently started selling several older games to increase his ZEPS 4 fund. Someone else claimed he had delayed buying a new television. Another said his parents had agreed to pay half if he maintained his school grades until launch. Beneath all the jokes was genuine uncertainty because nobody could tell whether the hardware ZAGE revealed could realistically be sold at a normal console price.
That tension continued until Monday, when ZAGE unexpectedly uploaded another short video.
There was no dramatic stage. No music. No animation.
Just Zaboru sitting in front of the camera.
He looked strangely relaxed considering he had spent the previous week deliberately making millions of people impatient.
"Yo, guys," he greeted with a grin. "I know what you're waiting for."
Immediately, viewers leaned closer.
"The price?"
Zaboru paused.
Then smiled.
"No."
Millions of people probably cursed simultaneously.
"Heheheh! Relax!" Zaboru continued before anyone could throw something at their monitor. "Proper launch information will come at the end of this week. Saturday, 31 January. We'll have the proper final trailer, retail information, pricing, launch details, everything you actually need before release so Proper Trailer will come Relax.."
That immediately created another problem.
Saturday was only two days before launch.
Zaboru continued as though he already knew what people were thinking. "And before you ask—no pre-orders before then."
He smiled wider.
"I want to make it more hyped."
That sentence was immediately quoted everywhere.
People could hardly believe Zaboru had openly admitted that he was withholding pre-orders simply because he enjoyed watching anticipation grow.
Within minutes, forum users started complaining again.
FlameLord: "BUILD THE HYPE? BUILD THE STORE PAGE."
AmatsuKE: "Zaboru is psychologically abusing his customers."
HIGHtune: "I hate this."
Bibiloc: "You're buying it."
HIGHtune: "Obviously."
The phrase "MY BODY IS READY" also began spreading around this time. Nobody could quite identify the exact original post anymore. Someone had simply edited Zaboru standing confidently in front of ZEPS 4 with the phrase written underneath, and for whatever reason it perfectly captured the mood of the audience.
Soon people were using it everywhere.
Instead, the company announced the remaining releases from its January schedule: Rise of Nations for PC, Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure for ZGBA, and Tales of Demons and Gods. Under normal circumstances all three games would have generated enormous individual attention, but there was an obvious difference in atmosphere.
Everyone knew what was coming.
ZEPS 4 was now less than two weeks away.
Some gamers even joked that the January releases were ZAGE deliberately giving everyone something to play while they waited.
For the next few days ZAGE became unexpectedly quiet regarding the new console. No major trailer appeared. No specifications were revealed. No new launch game was announced. Zaboru did not appear to troll anyone with another interview.
That silence somehow made the anticipation worse.
People knew Saturday was coming.
They knew the final proper trailer was coming.
They knew the price was finally coming.
They knew pre-orders would finally open but for now they want to try ZAGE New games.
To be continued.
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