In the three days following the conclusion of one-punch man, Rei was effectively besieged by Japanese media and fans wherever he went.
After all, his movements were easy to track, he still had to attend classes. In the days after the finale aired, the teaching building where he studied was packed to the brim, so crowded it felt like not even a drop of water could seep through. Fans and reporters had rushed over the moment word spread.
"Shirogane-sensei, regarding one-punch man, do you have any follow-up plans? Will there be a fifth season?"
"If I come up with a good enough idea someday, I won't rule it out," Rei replied calmly. "But for now, there are no plans."
"Now that one-punch man has ended, you'll have more time, right? Could you update Hunter x Hunter twice a week? I'm a Hunter fan!"
"If I remember correctly," Rei said with a sigh, "last week's update was forty-two pages. I'm sorry, I'm human, not a manga-printing machine. Unless I only write the script and stop drawing entirely, doubling the updates isn't realistic."
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
"Shirogane-sensei, what kind of animation is Arcane exactly? There are rumors you invested more than 1 billion yen into it. Is that true?"
Rei had already forced his way through the crowd to the parking lot and was about to get into his car when he heard that question.
He stopped.
"Arcane," Rei said after a brief pause, "is an animation that, from any perspective, will not lose to any of my past works."
The reporter's eyes lit up.
"You mean it's better, or more commercially valuable, than Hunter x Hunter and one-punch man?"
"No." Rei shook his head. "That's not what I mean."
"Among my well-known works, Hikaru no Go has the lowest commercial return," he continued. "But no fan would say Hunter x Hunter or one-punch man is better than Hikaru no Go because of that."
He smiled faintly.
"Arcane is the same. Its quality won't be inferior to any of my previous works. As for how it performs after release…" Rei paused, then said lightly, "Let's look forward to it. Personally, I'm very confident."
After one-punch man concluded, media attention converged on Rei. For several consecutive days, headlines across Japan's animation industry were filled with his interview remarks.
But popularity in animation comes fast, and fades just as quickly.
As September ended and October arrived, fans swiftly shifted their focus to Hunter x Hunter, which had begun airing as a long-running annual series.
Thanks to Rei's high-intensity manga updates, Hoshimori Group showed rare confidence: the first season of Hunter x Hunter was greenlit immediately as a full-year broadcast, with no fear of catching up to the source material.
With one-punch man gone, the top spot in Japan's animation ratings changed hands.
After the sixth season of Echoes of the End wrapped up, Hunter x Hunter dominated the autumn lineup. Its ratings stabilized around 6%, while the second-place series hovered at only 5.2%, a clear gap.
With no real competitors, Hunter x Hunter's market share expanded rapidly, feeding back into manga sales. By mid-October, average per-volume sales officially surpassed 17.5 million copies, closing to within two million of the record Echoes of the End had taken seven years to reach.
Everything was moving at breakneck speed.
From Rei's debut in his first year of high school with Five Centimeters per Second, to the conclusion of one-punch man during his second year of university, and now Hunter x Hunter charging toward the top, less than four years had passed, yet Japan's animation world had been thoroughly shaken.
Rei wasn't yet the greatest creator in history.
But among creators of his generation, his momentum was unquestionably unmatched.
This was the inertia of the animation industry: sometimes, a single work could elevate someone from obscurity to the industry's ceiling.
It had been the same for Kubo, Oda, and Kishimoto in Rei's previous life.
And Rei didn't just have one hit, he had several, released back-to-back. To his contemporaries in this world, it felt almost absurd.
After one-punch man ended, Rei truly felt lighter. Accustomed to juggling three major works at once, he now had time to immerse himself more deeply in Arcane's production, and the quality of Hunter x Hunter's manuscripts noticeably improved.
With time to spare, he even began attending comic conventions in with a few close friends, Misaki and Miyu.
But when Rei saw the two sisters cosplaying Tatsumaki and Fubuki, with their roles intentionally swapped, his expression turned… complicated.
"Your eyes are glued to us, huh?" Miyu laughed cheerfully in the car on the way home. "Didn't expect my sister and me to be this popular, did you?"
She grinned and added, "I told you, if you used that face, Rei, cosplaying as Genos would've been perfect. But you had to go as Mumen Rider. That guy has zero popularity!"
"But I really like this character," Rei said calmly.
"Then why did you draw him so weak?"
"It's precisely because he's weak, and still never gives up, that I like him," Rei laughed.
Miyu paused. Her fingers unconsciously twirled a strand of her green-dyed hair into a circle. After a long moment, she let out a quiet sigh.
"At today's comic convention, almost one-third of the cosplayers were dressed as characters from one-punch man or Hunter x Hunter," she said. "I'm not sure about next season…"
Rei understood what she was getting at before she finished.
"Next season, invite me to the convention again," he said with a smile.
"I'll bet you that the character with the most cosplayers will be Jinx."
"Jinx?" Miyu froze.
"She's a character from Arcane," Misaki said calmly from the driver's seat. "Rei's new animation airing next season."
"Oh, right!" Miyu's eyes lit up. "The blue-haired crazy girl from the trailer at the end of the one-punch man finale?"
"I didn't expect you to actually do homework," Rei said, genuinely surprised.
"Of course I did!" Miyu coughed lightly.
"My Touch of Glass anime is airing next season too. I'd be stupid not to research my biggest competitor."
At the words biggest competitor, both Rei and Misaki fell briefly silent.
Miyu really did think far ahead.
Touch of Glass had been serialized for a long time, and its popularity on Dream Comic had climbed into the top ten. If the anime adaptation performed well, average volume sales might break four or five million, and its ranking could rise another notch.
But competing with Rei's new animation, one with an investment exceeding 1 billion yen?
That possibility was about as realistic as winning the lottery.
Miyu seemed to read their thoughts instantly. She didn't argue, just turned to gaze out the window at the passing nightscape. After a while, she spoke again.
"The internet says you spent over eight hundred million on production alone. Is that true, Rei?"
"Not exactly," Rei said after a moment.
"The production cost was over nine hundred million, yes. But on top of that, I invested more than a hundred million in promotion."
Misaki frowned. "That doesn't make sense. If you'd spent that much on domestic promotion, the buzz around Arcane would be several times higher than it is now."
"No," Rei said, smiling.
"I didn't spend much of it domestically. Given my recognition in Japan, excessive local promotion isn't very efficient."
He continued casually, "Most of that budget went overseas."
Misaki and Miyu both turned to him.
"Thanks to the overseas distribution of one-punch man and its performance," Rei said, "negotiations for Arcane went extremely smoothly. The animation is scheduled for simultaneous broadcast in forty-seven countries, large, medium, and small, starting January 7."
He laughed softly.
"With Arcane, I'm not aiming only for a hit in Japan. I want it to explode overseas as well."
Misaki and Miyu stared at him in silence.
They were still wondering whether Arcane could compete with Hunter x Hunter in domestic ratings, while Rei was already planning for global dominance.
And he wasn't relying on the international channels of a massive conglomerate like Hoshimori Group.
He was relying on quality.
And on the capital he controlled himself.
Until now, they'd subconsciously thought of Rei as the promising new manga artist who'd risen with the help of Hoshimori Group.
But at this moment, both of them felt it clearly.
After the runaway success of one-punch man, Rei had truly crossed a line.
He was now someone who could sit across the table from any animation group or media company in Japan, and speak as an equal.
Even without backing from a major conglomerate, he could now shape the animation market with his own hands.
And it had taken him less than four years.