Parallel world Manga Artist

Chapter 338 338: The Choice

Late April.

The first teaser video for Spirited Away was jointly released by Shirogane Animation and Illumination Production Company.

Three months remained until the theatrical release. The promotional work had to begin now. The last Rei animated film had been Your Name the previous year, and a large number of Japan's film audience had been waiting for the next one since its theatrical run concluded.

When the art style of Spirited Away appeared in the teaser, which carried a completely different visual identity from Your Name, a significant portion of the fan community was immediately disoriented.

"Shirogane-sensei, how can your art style change this dramatically between works?"

The disorientation did not last long. The style was unexpectedly pleasing to the eye once the initial surprise passed. The musical approach was equally strong, and equally different from anything Your Name had established as expectation.

The introductory information for the female lead indicated she was an elementary school student.

This should not have anything to do with romance, right?

Then, at the end of the trailer, the male protagonist Haku appeared.

A large portion of the Spirited Away discussion immediately pivoted to something nobody had anticipated.

"That boy who appeared at the end of the trailer. Is that not Akira from the Hikaru no Go manga?"

"The face shape. The eyes. The resemblance is extremely strong."

"This is a fantasy animated film. Could there be a cameo from a Hikaru no Go character?"

"No. Akira from Hikaru no Go is Japanese. The Spirited Away world-building in the trailer is about a girl named Chihiro entering a magical spirit world. The settings do not match. A cameo is impossible."

"What is impossible for Shirogane-sensei's works? The world-building has a girl crossing into a magical world. A Japanese character crossing from another world into that same magical world would be completely consistent with the premise."

"Stop forcing a connection. It is probably just a similar character design. If you look carefully there are differences."

"We know you want a Hikaru no Go sequel but this is not it."

"We cannot help it. Shirogane-sensei digs holes and does not fill them. Hikaru no Go clearly had sufficient plot remaining to continue and he ended it anyway."

"Hikaru no Go at least had a relatively complete ending. What about One-Punch Man fans and Hunter x Hunter fans? Still waiting. It has been two or three years. Shirogane-sensei has already begun preparing the next work after Bleach and the return dates for those two are still unknown."

"Painful."

"It is not easy for Your Name fans either. We want to see another Shirogane-sensei romance film. How is a twelve-year-old female protagonist going to deliver that?"

"The fact that it passed certification indicates there is no clear romance plot involving the female lead. Works with romance involving minors under fourteen cannot be theatrically released or broadcast."

"What about Five Centimeters Per Second? The male protagonist in that work was fourteen when he visited Akari. And even that was technically not a confirmed romantic relationship."

"If there is no romance and only fantasy, I suddenly want to watch it less."

"You say that now. When Spirited Away gets rave reviews after release, you will be there for the second and third viewing. We all know this."

Rei had not entirely failed to anticipate this wave of discussion connecting Spirited Away to Hikaru no Go.

In his previous life, he had watched the Hikaru no Go anime before Spirited Away. When Spirited Away had broadcast on television at the time, he had immediately noticed that Haku bore a striking resemblance to Akira Toya. Japan's anime fans had made the same observation in his previous life. They were making it again now.

A unique resonance between two worlds.

He posted a few comments on his social media accounts encouraging fans to support the Spirited Away film when the time came, without addressing the Haku-Akira comparison directly. Let them have the speculation. It was generating discussion that money could not buy.

The first large-scale promotional push for Spirited Away had kicked off across Japan and in the global film market simultaneously. Like the Demon Slayer film, Spirited Away was scheduled for simultaneous global release.

The success of the Demon Slayer theatrical releases abroad had made the overseas theatre chain negotiations considerably smoother this time. Local support and screen allocation would not be treated as an afterthought.

Rei looked at the time on his computer screen.

Late April. His twenty-fourth birthday was approaching.

From arriving in this world at sixteen to now: eight full years.

Almost catching up to my age before I crossed over, he said to himself without deciding to.

He shook his head and set the thought aside. He picked up his drawing pen.

He had not attended to this particular task yet because the timing had not required it. With two or three months remaining until Spirited Away's release, the manga adaptation needed to be drawn now, to be handed to the Hoshimori Group for tankōbon merchandise sales after the film's theatrical run concluded.

In late April, the Spirited Away promotional teaser, which had occupied the trending search lists for several days, was finally displaced on Thursday evening by Attack on Titan's broadcast-day activity.

The current Attack on Titan fan community had no awareness of what this particular episode was about to deliver.

They were in a good mood.

The Armored Titan, Reiner, had already been defeated by Eren twice. The Colossal Titan, Bertholdt, was now standing in an abandoned city without obvious mobility. The Beast Titan was, from what they could observe, essentially a large and strategically capable ape.

With Eren, Mikasa, Levi, and hundreds of Survey Corps members in the field, the mathematical advantage seemed clear. At most, a few ordinary soldiers would be sacrificed before the battle concluded.

The community's primary anticipation was actually directed past the battle itself, toward what came after: once Eren captured the Beast Titan or extracted a prisoner from Bertholdt or Reiner, the truth of the world would finally be completely revealed. The basement. The world outside the walls. Everything the series had been building toward across three full seasons.

Kenji had left work early. He was in a fan group chat, discussing the upcoming episode with the light mood of someone who believed the outcome was relatively predictable, when eight o'clock arrived.

He put down his phone.

It's here.

He opened a can of cola and took a sip. The Attack on Titan opening theme began, the version that had run from Season One through Season Three, the music that had become so associated with the series' specific emotional register that hearing it now produced a conditioned response regardless of context.

How would Japan's anime industry have developed without Shirogane-sensei.

In all of Japan, the only animation investor who dared to commit over 200 million yen to a single episode was Shirogane-sensei. The image quality on screen smelled entirely of money.

The opening theme ended. The plot continued from the previous week.

Following the stirring music of the Flying God Song from the previous episode, Bertholdt's Colossal Titan moved slowly through Eren's hometown, the small town where the wall had been breached five years ago.

A wave of his hand sent frantic wind tearing through the air. Any Survey Corps member attempting to approach lost control of their ODM Gear trajectory involuntarily.

Even the one or two exceptional soldiers who could get within range of his body found the Colossal Titan's surface spraying massive waves of superheated steam at several hundred degrees. Nobody could actually make contact with it.

Two minutes into the episode, Kenji understood that something had been wrong with his pre-episode assessment.

Sitting duck.

He had called the Colossal Titan a sitting duck.

What he was watching was a creature with maximum attack power, maximum health, and maximum defensive capability. The only limitation was mobility. And for the people inside the walls, whose ranged weaponry was conventional gunpowder firearms that probably could not pierce the Colossal Titan's skin, immobility was not a meaningful weakness.

Have Eren transform and fight it directly?

Kenji looked at the size relationship on screen. A fifteen-metre Titan versus a fifty-metre Titan. After transformation, Eren could probably reach the Colossal Titan's knee if he jumped. Eren's entire transformed body was smaller than one of the Colossal's calves.

The balance in this series is completely unreasonable, Kenji thought, not for the first time.

All Titan Shifters technically had the same category of power. But the Colossal Titan was numerical dominance in every direction. Ymir's small Titan with the large head was almost entirely mobility. Eren's Titan and Annie's Titan were middling.

The Armored Titan had the most theoretical potential, except that Reiner's actual win-loss record suggested he did not know how to use it. If Annie were piloting Reiner's Armored Titan, she would probably have ended every encounter in the first exchange.

The scene shifted.

Inside the wall: Eren and the Survey Corps besieging the Colossal Titan. Outside the wall: Levi and Commander Erwin leading the corps members in defence against whatever the Beast Titan was preparing.

The Beast Titan began moving.

It displayed its unique ability.

It picked up the large mountain rocks in the terrain surrounding it and compressed them in its grip until they fragmented into high-density gravel. Then, in the posture of a baseball pitcher, it wound up, rotated, released.

The sky filled with stones.

From several kilometres away. Descending like targeted projectiles. A single throw achieving aerial bombardment across a wide area with accuracy that thousands of conventional troops could not replicate.

One round of attacks. The Survey Corps on the open plain took catastrophic losses.

Kenji's mouth was open.

How do you fight that.

The Colossal Titan could only fight at melee range. The Beast Titan could bombard from several kilometres away and never needed to engage directly. The dozen-plus giant Titans it had under its coordination control formed a defensive perimeter that meant anyone who did ride close to it was simply delivering themselves.

This is not going to be a feel-good episode.

The oppressive weight that had defined the first and second seasons came back completely. The specific quality of being dominated that Attack on Titan produced better than any other series Kenji watched.

Shirogane-sensei. You are not going to start killing people again.

After the first half of Season Three, with the Royal Government arc having concluded without a single major protagonist group death, the community had allowed itself to believe that perhaps Shirogane-sensei was no longer committed to sending out emotional damage at regular intervals.

The sense of despair being established in this episode suggested otherwise.

Horses. Personnel. Supplies. Under the Beast Titan's sustained bombardment, the Survey Corps could only use terrain and buildings to take cover. They had no ability to fight back. In an open plain against tens of thousands of ultra-high-speed projectile fragments, there was nothing a group of humans on horseback could do.

The Beast Titan would not engage in melee if it could bombard from a distance. It was not careless. It was strategic.

The animation's detailed rendering of the casualties on the open plain produced a physiological discomfort in Kenji that he recognised as intentional. The severed limbs. The broken bodies.

The specific way the series refused to sanitise what artillery bombardment by a creature of this scale actually did to human beings on an open field. The cruelty of it. The despair of soldiers who could not advance, could not retreat to their horses without those horses being eliminated in the next volley, could only take cover and wait.

On the other side of the wall, Eren rushed at the Colossal Titan and grabbed its foot. The Colossal Titan kicked him away with casual force. Eren's form went spinning into the wall with limbs flailing. The gap in scale made the attempt look almost absurd.

Commander Erwin was pinned in a building. Not daring to show his head above the sill.

If they tried to use the horses to withdraw, the Beast Titan needed one round of throws to eliminate most of them. After that, the Survey Corps members on foot in an open plain would be what Attack on Titan called delivery food.

The soldiers were falling into despair visibly.

Erwin's face showed the expression of someone who had exhausted their options.

"As long as you and Eren can return alive, we still have hope."

Levi had already begun calculating the mathematics of sacrificing everyone present to cover Eren and the commander's withdrawal.

"We have been utterly defeated."

"Yes. That is assuming we have no means of counterattacking."

Erwin's tone was completely level.

Both Kenji and Levi caught the specific quality of that phrasing simultaneously.

"You have one?" Levi asked.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you say so from the beginning?"

"If this operation goes smoothly, you might be able to take down the Beast Titan. But I, and all the recruits here, will have to use our lives to trade for that opportunity."

'Was Erwin afraid of dying?'

Kenji's eyes went wide. He did not want to watch Shirogane-sensei take Erwin in this direction.

The logic was straightforward when he turned it over. Sacrificing everyone present versus a total wipeout seemed like little difference in isolation.

But the distinction was whether the Beast Titan was taken down in the process. The former was a pyrrhic victory with the strategic objective achieved. The latter was total collapse with nothing gained. Erwin understood this logic better than anyone in the field.

"The soldiers' morale has already collapsed. To get them to charge toward their deaths, I have to perform like a first-class con artist, using every word I have. If I don't lead from the front, they will never move. Which means I will be the first to die."

Erwin's tone was calm. Underneath the calm was something more complex that Kenji could not immediately name.

"But if that happens... I won't know what's in the basement of Eren's house."

Kenji's eyes went wide.

So that was it.

Erwin was not afraid of dying. His past had been depicted across two seasons with enough clarity that this was not in question. What he was afraid of was dying without knowing the truth he had spent his entire career pursuing.

He had joined the Survey Corps for a specific reason: to understand the true history of the walls, to answer the question of why creatures like Titans existed and what lay beneath the surface of everything humanity had been told. His father had died for this question. Erwin had built his entire life around carrying it forward.

The truth he had sought for all of it was in a basement on the other side of Wall Maria. Reachable. Within actual physical reach, for the first time in his life.

He could disregard the lives of everyone present. Slip into the city. Find Eren's house. Open the door.

The answer would be there.

But the strategic objective required him to die in a charge first.

This choice, Kenji thought. I do not know how I would make this choice.

It was too cruel to have a clean answer to.

"I want to go to the basement of Eren's house right now," Erwin said to Levi, his voice low, sitting on the stone. "I firmly believe my conjecture will be verified."

"Insisting on leading the corps to investigate the world beyond the walls, time and again, the enormous sacrifices of the soldiers made me think repeatedly that I might as well just die. Even so, my father's dream still lingers in my mind. And now the answer is within reach. It is already so close."

He lowered his head.

"But, Levi. Do you see them? The soldiers who sacrificed themselves in the past are behind me. Watching me."

His dream. His sense of responsibility as the commander who had spent those soldiers. Both of them present simultaneously. Both of them real.

Then the most moving scene of the episode arrived.

Levi knelt on one knee.

He looked at Erwin and made his request. For humanity. For the strategic victory. In the direct, unornamented language that Levi used for everything that mattered.

"I will take care of the Beast Titan."

"Erwin. Give up on your dream and die."

"Lead the recruits to hell."

Levi's voice was as cold as it always was.

Kenji realised his mouth was dry. He picked up the cola can and drank without taking his eyes off the screen.

A relieved smile appeared at the corner of Erwin's lips.

That was the decisive weight on the scale. Levi's words, spoken without comfort or ceremony, had given Erwin the only thing he needed: someone telling him clearly what the moment required and asking him to do it.

Then Erwin rode to the front of the recruit formation.

They were assembled on the open ground. Young faces. Most of them had joined the Survey Corps in the months following the earlier seasons, drawn by what the corps represented. None of them had expected their first major operation to end here, on an open plain, being asked to charge across it toward something that had just erased half their number with thrown rocks.

The fear was visible on every face. There was no point concealing it.

"There's no point standing around. You'll only be showered by more boulders. Ready your horses on the double."

The recruits moved to comply, but the dread of what was being asked of them had not gone anywhere. One of them, a young soldier named Floch, finally said what every face in the formation was already saying silently.

"Be honest. Are all of us riding to our death?"

Erwin looked at him.

"Yes. We are."

Floch processed this.

"And since we're dying anyway, you're saying that it's better? Before we even start fighting?"

"I am."

The logic of hopelessness completed itself in Floch's expression.

"But wait. If we'll die anyway, then who cares what we do? We could just disobey your orders. And it wouldn't mean a thing, would it?"

"Yes. You're precisely right."

The silence that followed was the silence of a formation on the edge of dissolution. Everything Erwin had just confirmed was true and everyone present knew it was true and for a moment the charge existed only as an abstract thing, something that had not yet become real.

Then Erwin began to speak again. Not in the voice of a commander issuing orders. In the voice of someone who had something to say that needed to be heard before the horses moved.

"Everything that you thought had meaning. Every hope, dream, or moment of happiness. None of it matters as you lie bleeding out on the battlefield. None of it changes what a speeding rock does to a body. We all die."

Kenji's hands had closed into fists without him deciding that.

"But does that mean our lives are meaningless? Does that mean that there was no point in our being born? Would you say that of our slain comrades? What about their lives? Were they meaningless?"

He paused.

"They were not. Their memory serves as an example to us all. The courageous fallen. The anguished fallen. Their lives have meaning because we, the living, refuse to forget them."

One recruit straightened in the saddle. Then another. The fear did not leave their faces. Something appeared alongside it that had no clean name.

"And as we ride to certain death, we trust our successors to do the same for us. Because my soldiers do not buckle or yield when faced with the cruelty of this world."

The formation tightened. The horses began to move.

"MY SOLDIERS PUSH FORWARD!"

"MY SOLDIERS SCREAM OUT!"

"MY SOLDIERS RAAAAGE!"

The smoke bombs went up simultaneously across the formation. Every surviving recruit fired their last resources into the sky to obscure the Beast Titan's sightlines. The formation broke into a full charge across the open ground. Erwin at the front, riding directly toward certain death, with every terrified young soldier behind him moving at full speed.

The fear was still on their faces.

They charged anyway.

This was Erwin's final choice.

Kenji had not moved since Floch asked the first question.

He was aware at some point that he had stopped breathing. His cola can sat untouched beside him. His hands were still closed into fists in his lap.

The tears were running and he was not addressing them.

One scene. That sense of tragedy and of fate landing simultaneously hit Kenji directly in the chest.

Shirogane-sensei. What are you doing. You are tricking the tears out of me again.

...

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