"Sure enough, her popularity is starting to surge. But unlike in 'Fate/stay night' from my previous world, Saber can't actually be romanced here, so she'll still lose quite a few hardcore otaku Saber fans. Well~ a gallant female knight is better anyway."
Kamiyā Yuu, who had been closely following developments on BIUBIUBIU, rubbed his chin and chuckled. He was fairly satisfied with the popularity Saber had achieved within the 'Fate/Zero' series.
Although Japan hadn't conducted any related popularity surveys, it was safe to say Saber had consistently ranked first there. A major reason was that she was the only female Heroic Spirit among the entire cast.
Assassin counted as one percent of one?
Kamiyā Yuu recalled Assassin's background setting.
In every Holy Grail War, the Assassin-class Servant was always one of the Hashashin. Although they all bore the name Hassan, each generation featured a different individual—the person who had inherited the position of leader among the Assassins.
The Hassan who appeared in 'Fate/stay night' was Cursed Arm, while the one in 'Fate/Zero' was Hundred Personas. Hundred Personas' Noble Phantasm had been shown very clearly in the anime: it granted numerous separate bodies. Those bodies were all personalities born from his dissociative identity disorder, and they existed on equal terms with one another.
Among them was even a... girl dressed in tight black clothing.
"Come to think of it, if Hundred Personas had physical needs, couldn't he just take care of them all by himself... Ahem, ahem. Forget it. Let's go check the popularity statistics over on NICENICE."
Kamiyā Yuu smiled at his own wandering thoughts. With a click of his mouse, he closed the 'Fate/Zero' community page on BIUBIUBIU and opened Japan's famous video website instead.
"A nineteen-percent rating. Sure enough, it still can't surpass Madoka's record."
The 'Fate/Zero' anime had entered the season with the support of its spin-off novels as well as the reputation Kamiyā Yuu had accumulated through 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica'. Its very first episode had already become the most popular anime of the season, and its popularity had continued rising steadily ever since. Just like 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica', it firmly occupied first place on the seasonal anime popularity rankings.
However, even though its starting point had been much stronger than 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' and its popularity had continued trending upward, by the time 'Fate/Zero' reached Episode 17, its overall popularity still hadn't surpassed 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica'.
'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' had brought an unprecedented shock to Japan's anime industry. That impact extended beyond animation production itself, strongly affecting viewers and investors who had begun paying attention to the anime market.
Among this year's October anime, quite a few productions had begun playing with "subversive" plot twists in an attempt to recreate the industry miracle of 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica'.
Yet the plot setup of 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' itself wasn't actually that extraordinary. The crucial point lay in how it subverted the conventions of its genre through sudden narrative reversal.
The reason 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' had managed to create a miracle in anime history ultimately depended most heavily on Kamiyā Yuu's abilities as an anime director. He had pushed the emotional impact of those narrative reversals to their absolute limit.
The characterization of the magical girls, the eerie artistic backgrounds, the brilliant storyboarding—setting aside the plot entirely, 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' was still an anime whose production quality surpassed even the industry's highest tier.
For an ordinary animation project to imitate it by treating a plot twist as its only selling point would achieve nothing except drawing a tiger and ending up with a dog.
The quality of 'Fate/Zero' wasn't much lower than that of 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica', but the limitations imposed by their respective subject matter meant the two works could never truly imitate one another.
Both the plot and characters of 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' catered very well to the tastes of Japanese anime fans. Elements such as breaking free from fate had long been indispensable to anime.
Japan's hierarchical relationships were extremely rigid, so most viewers were especially sensitive to stories about defying destiny.
Thinking about it was rather ironic.
In his previous world, the representative shōnen anime of that era—'Bleach', 'Naruto', and 'One Piece'—all gave their protagonists similar burdens to overcome, yet each protagonist ultimately seemed to demonstrate the importance of bloodline above all else.
In 'Naruto', Hyūga Neji ended up becoming the biggest loser.
From an aesthetic standpoint, 'Fate/Zero' was more appealing to overseas audiences and viewers in China.
On BIUBIUBIU, the danmaku video site Kamiyā Yuu had founded, 'Fate/Zero's overall popularity was second only to 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica'.
Over the past half-year, China's ACG industry had also continued developing. Most of the profits BIUBIUBIU earned from operating the game 'Warship Girls Collection' were poured into the development of the danmaku video website as though being sunk into the ocean.
The return on that excessive investment was an explosive rise in the site's overall popularity.
It couldn't be said that BIUBIUBIU had driven the entire Chinese ACG community forward, but there was certainly no shortage of viewers who had first encountered the field through the website.
On Nice-net, 'Fate/Zero's overall popularity had risen sharply after the climactic scene in which Lancer Zhao Yun confronted Iskandar's Ionioi Hetairoi. Its total popularity had now drawn level with 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica', while receiving even higher critical evaluations.
The imagery of Ionioi Hetairoi remained a frequent topic of discussion among European and American viewers.
Unlike mainstream 3D animation, it had been created entirely through hand-drawn 2D animation, yet the resulting spectacle was even more overwhelming. The emotional force of the scene and the handling of the storyboards were breathtaking, overturning the assumption in many viewers' minds that 3D meant blockbuster animation while 2D meant old-fashioned animation.
["If 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' represents the pinnacle of Japanese animation, then 'Fate/Zero' may very well become an immortal classic that transcends many of the medium's limitations. Oh~ of course, that's only my assessment so far. I believe Director Kamiyā won't give us a terrible ending." — Robert, renowned animation critic and head of the animation division at Nice-net.]
Robert, the animation executive who had first arranged a collaboration with Kamiyā Yuu, had already been promoted within the company thanks to a string of successful results.
He was now responsible for the entire animation section of Nice-net, including European and American animation, and had entered the company's core management structure.
Every collaboration with Kamiyā Yuu had achieved considerable success. Although Robert still regretted that Kamiyā Yuu no longer produced 3D animation for the 'RWBY' series, he had continued closely following his work.
Originally, Nice-net had only planned to collaborate with Kamiyā Yuu on 'RWBY'.
However, thanks to Robert's efforts, one internet giant and one Japanese animation studio had maintained a close relationship ever since.
From 'Magical Girl Nanoha' to 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' and now 'Fate/Zero', nearly every project had broken overseas performance records for Japanese animation.
The upper management of Nice-net had gradually begun paying serious attention to the profits and possibilities offered by Japanese 2D animation.
In addition, the American publishing rights for 'Warship Girls Collection' had already been handed over to Nice-net.
Before long, representatives would come over specifically to negotiate the details with Mizuhara Raiko.
Cultural differences naturally caused Eastern and Western players to have different tastes in games. However, as long as a game was good enough, even a heavily Japanese-style title could attract European and American players.
Leaving aside games such as 'Dark Souls', whose cultural atmosphere already leaned heavily toward Western audiences, even the quintessential JRPG series 'Final Fantasy' had enjoyed considerable popularity in Europe and America in Kamiyā Yuu's previous world.
'Warship Girls Collection' had already attracted the attention of some European and American players when it first launched in Japan.
Even now, the version of 'Warship Girls Collection' operated by Mirror Flower Water Moon Game Studio had a considerable number of players from around the world.
By using a special login client developed independently by one player, they could even access the game entirely in English.
As a browser game, 'Warship Girls Collection' had received extremely high praise from European and American players as well as several gaming media outlets.
In their eyes, the game's basic framework itself was a generation ahead of its time. It wouldn't even have been an exaggeration to create an entirely new game category specifically for it.
By comparison, the cute-girl personifications of the warships almost seemed unnecessary.
Back in October, the moment European and American gaming media learned that Nice-net would soon publish 'Warship Girls Collection', they immediately reported the news.
A large number of players celebrated, expressing relief that they would finally no longer need accounts on the Japanese or Chinese servers just to play the game.
...
On November 10, Volume Four of the 'Fate/Zero' novel officially went on sale at Chiyo Bookstore's physical locations.
The boost brought by Episode 17 allowed the fourth volume to sell more than one hundred thousand copies on its first day.
With that, total sales of the 'Fate/Zero' novels surpassed two million copies!
It had left the second-place 'Hero's Tale' more than eight hundred thousand copies behind.
Although it had yet to surpass the historical annual sales record of 2.14 million copies set by 'Violet Blooming Garden', Volume Four would continue selling, and Volume Five had yet to be released.
It was easy to foresee that surpassing 'Violet Blooming Garden's all-time sales record was only a matter of time.
As a form of entertainment literature, light novels were enthusiastically embraced by young readers while also receiving criticism similar to anime.
The state of the industry was actually quite similar to that of Chinese web fiction.
Perhaps the most sarcastic phrase of all was:
["Buy the illustrations, get toilet paper for free."]
Facts had proven that light novel readers really did respond to this.
The light novel industry had once conducted a survey showing that the first-volume sales of a light novel were largely determined by its illustrations.
After that came the comparatively negligible factors of the author's writing ability and the story's premise.
The infamous sales benchmark 'Infinite Stratos' was probably the best example.
Even author Izuru Yumizuru's own parents had reportedly described the series as incoherent garbage.
After hearing his own work evaluated like that, even Yumizuru, who had always seemed rather "confident" in his work, couldn't help complaining.
At the time, considering that Yumizuru had once posted arrogant statements on Twitter such as ["I may be the greatest genius of this century"] and ["If I make the British girl the main heroine, do you think Britain will knight me?"], Japanese netizens proceeded to hit him even harder.
Most of the criticism boiled down to one sentiment:
["Aside from the illustrations, your work is shit."]
Chinese wish-fulfillment web fiction was much the same.
However, for simplistic web fiction to become popular, it still generally required a certain level of ability from the author. Without the necessary skill, one couldn't even write that kind of story properly.
Kamiyā Yuu believed that the popularity of 'Infinite Stratos', which was packed with commercial elements—harems, mindless fan service, clichéd plotting—couldn't possibly be attributed solely to its excellent illustrations.
The light novel market was similar to China's web-fiction market. Even if such commercial elements were often clichéd, the sheer size of the audience they appealed to couldn't be ignored.
With the release of Volume Four of 'Fate/Zero', what fans discussed most enthusiastically was the sheer length of the novels.
Each volume was almost as long as an entire light novel series installment's worth of text, to the point that what was technically a single volume had to be split across multiple physical books.
How exactly had Kamiyā Yuu, who was also directing the 'Fate/Zero' anime, managed to write so much in such a short amount of time?
That question had become one of the most widely discussed mysteries in the light novel industry.
Second only to that were the illustrations personally drawn by Kamiyā Yuu.
Compared with his fame in the animation industry, Kamiyā Yuu's reputation in the illustration world was no smaller, and perhaps even greater.
The reason was simple: illustrations drawn by him were almost impossible to mistake.
His incomparable style was so distinctive that, at present, no other illustrator could successfully imitate it.
Numerous top illustrators had publicly praised Kamiyā Yuu's work.
The most famous incident had occurred shortly after 'Warship Girls Collection' implemented the Madokami Mental Model.
At first, one well-known illustrator had failed to obtain the Madokami Mental Model and decided to draw one himself as consolation.
Yet after a full week of effort, he could only upload a half-finished version to Twitter and ask for help, stating that no matter what he did, he simply couldn't draw Madokami properly.
He had even tried tracing it exactly, but before he reached the coloring stage, he could already feel the enormous gap between his work and the original.
Once that tweet appeared, it attracted the attention of many illustrators.
Quite a few wanted to try it themselves and prove their skill.
But one month later, every illustrator who had attempted to recreate the Madokami illustration had given up.
Numerous half-finished drafts and failed works were still circulating online even now.
["I'm literally copying it. Even if every single line is identical, I still can't reproduce this illustration."]
["The feeling this illustration gives off is incredibly subtle. Only when you study it carefully do you realize just how much effort the artist must have poured into it! I don't think anyone can reproduce this style."]
["Failed..."]
["I couldn't even make it to the coloring stage... and I can't figure out why."]
Even one top-tier illustrator had spent half a month perfectly reproducing the "form" of the Madokami illustration.
Yet when it came time to color it, he deliberated for a long while before ultimately giving up, because he realized his version still deviated far too much from Kamiyā Yuu's original Madokami.
Afterward, with Kamiyā Yuu's permission, illustrators began researching his work.
At the time, Kamiyā Yuu had still been producing the 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' anime. He had casually agreed to the request verbally, then immediately forgotten about the minor matter.
However, that research managed to uncover a small part of the reason behind the strange charm of Kamiyā Yuu's illustrations.
His drawing habits were vastly different from mainstream methods.
His near-mechanical precision meant that every individual stroke could produce a completely different final result.
Even if the linework itself were reproduced perfectly, coloring remained the most crucial stage—and also the part that was virtually impossible to reproduce by hand.
Kamiyā Yuu's illustration techniques incorporated Uehara Etsuki's master-level style from this world, while also drawing heavily on lessons summarized from the highly mature illustration industry of his previous world.
Both his techniques and his artistic style were worlds apart from those of the illustration industry in this world.
Even a beautifully rendered illustration from twenty years earlier could become a poor work by present-day standards because of the numerous limitations of its era.
Technical limitations made the gap between Kamiyā Yuu's illustrations and those of this world's top illustrators look smaller than it truly was.
In reality, his work was far from something an ordinary artist could casually imitate.
After this incident, Kamiyā Yuu became almost universally known throughout Japan's illustration industry.
Because his illustrations were effectively impossible to reproduce, many readers interested in illustration believed the artwork alone possessed extremely high collectible value.
The length of the 'Fate/Zero' novels, the originality of their premise, the compelling story, and the exquisite illustrations—all of the factors most critical to light novel sales stood at the very top of the industry.
As a result, although the anime had failed to surpass the miracle created by 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica', the light novels, which were effectively supplementary material for the anime, had achieved an almost equally miraculous sales phenomenon within the light novel industry.