Attack on Heaven (3)

Most people in the world don’t know this fact, but.

The reason Ragna aired the two works “Attack on Heaven” and “Lulu’s Adventure” not only at the same time but in the same time slot was.

To make “Lulu’s Adventure” stand out as much as possible when compared to “Attack on Heaven”.

One day, Kaya, an imperial princess and genius monster rookie animation director who suddenly appeared in the Empire.

Ragna Terscion, a has-been animation director who goes around acting cocky just because he luckily had a few hit works in the past.

The has-been animation director Ragna Terscion, unable to admit that his abilities don’t match up to Kaya’s, makes all sorts of unreasonable moves to promote his work “Attack on Heaven”, but.

He had written a script where he ultimately kneels before the work “Lulu’s Adventure” by the genius monster rookie animation director Kaya, unable to defeat it.

However, unfortunately, the situation didn’t flow as Ragna hoped.

Because due to the lethal dose of dopamine poured out from the beginning for the unreasonable developments in the latter half, most viewers were watching “Attack on Heaven” instead of “Lulu’s Adventure”.

Therefore, even on the ‘ratings’ system that Ragna introduced to explicitly compare the popularity of the two works, “Attack on Heaven” was overwhelming “Lulu’s Adventure”.

[Old is gold… Was the emergence of a ‘monster rookie’ in the animation market still a story of the distant future?]

[A scathing yet poignant class fable clearly woven with ascent and descent… Let’s find out why the work “Attack on Heaven” captured viewers’ hearts….]

Accordingly, the media were also excitedly giving indirect advertisements saying that the work “Attack on Heaven” was showing overwhelming ratings compared to “Lulu’s Adventure”, and.

“…How can this be, does this really work…?”

“Was it true that anime should be made without using the brain, as Director Ragna said…? The one who didn’t know anything was… not the director, but me…?”

And as “Attack on Heaven” was doing so well, contrary to what they had expected, the staff fell into cognitive dissonance, but.

At this moment, the person feeling more panicked than anyone else was none other than Ragna.

‘…Shit. This isn’t right….’

The reason he produced “Attack on Heaven” ignoring settings and plausibility from the first episode was to spectacularly fall while being directly compared to “Lulu’s Adventure”, which had carefully built up its settings one by one.

But if “Lulu’s Adventure”‘s ratings are crawling on the floor like this, which viewer would criticize the sloppy developments in the latter half of “Attack on Heaven” later?

‘This is dangerous. This is really dangerous!’

Finally, fearing that at this rate, “Attack on Heaven” would receive the title of ‘a high-quality animation with a clean beginning, development, turn, and conclusion’ like “Machine God Chronicles”, Ragna decided to use his last resort.

That last resort was.

“I’ll help you.”

“…Pardon?”

“I mean, I want to help with the production of the work “Lulu’s Adventure”.”

To run to Kaya, who was concentrating on producing “Lulu’s Adventure”, and explicitly offer help.

To put it nicely, it was a reciprocal favor, and to put it badly, should we say he was setting up two households?

“…But, Director, you must be busy producing “Attack on Heaven”, so how-“

“Well, it’s because of our relationship, Miss Kaya. If I don’t help you at a time like this, who else would help you?”

Grab.

Saying this, Ragna firmly grasped both of Kaya’s hands to add sincerity to his words, and.

“…Ah.”

At that moment, Kaya’s face melted down.

For Kaya, physical contact with Ragna had a powerful effect that could sweep away all doubts in an instant.

“…..”

“…I’m going to tell Serika-sama everything later.”

Instead, Evangeline and Liz behind Kaya looked at him with somewhat annoyed eyes, but that wasn’t very important.

Isn’t it really a worthwhile price if he can meet an honorable death in exchange for receiving some nagging from Serika later?

Thus, Ragna began to focus more on the production of “Lulu’s Adventure” while half-abandoning “Attack on Heaven” that he had been making.

First, the work that Ragna started on first was none other than-

“First, I’ll change the characters of the appearing characters a bit.”

In Ragna’s view, the characters of the appearing characters in “Lulu’s Adventure” were somewhat one-dimensional.

Well, that was unavoidable.

Strictly speaking, the characters in the animations Ragna produced were rather too ahead of their time.

If there was a problem, it might be that due to such characterization, the animation “Lulu’s Adventure” looked older than the animation “Attack on Heaven”.

“…Indeed, was that so? But if we suddenly change the characters’ personalities at this point, there’s also a possibility of setting collapse-“

“No. It’s not about changing the characters’ personalities. Rather, it might be better to further strengthen the personalities the characters already had.”

“…Pardon? What do you mean?”

For a moment, Kaya tilted her head at Ragna’s words.

“I mean, don’t try to make the characters three-dimensional by following my work, but let’s bring out the uniqueness of “Lulu’s Adventure”.”

In Ragna’s view, the characters appearing in “Lulu’s Adventure” had somewhat flat personalities, but at the same time, they had their own charm.

Just as we can’t conclude that characters from works considered ‘classics’ on Earth are unconditionally inferior to characters from modern works just because they show one-dimensional aspects.

So, there was no need to create three-dimensional villains following Ragna’s animations.

Because sometimes a villain with nauseating evilness could appear more attractive to viewers.

“…Nauseating evilness? What’s that?”

“Nauseating evilness is using an ignorant person who knows nothing. Only for one’s own benefit…!”

“…?”

Well, to put it simply, the point was that if you’re going to create a bastard, a thorough bastard is better than a half-assed one.

Because the catharsis viewers feel when encountering a disgusting bastard rather than just an ordinary jerk would also be doubled.

“Also, it would be good to tweak the superpowers that the protagonist will gain when confronting Ian, who will transform into a vampire later.”

“In what way?”

“Doesn’t the ‘holy magic’ that Luka is scheduled to awaken in the current development feel too magician-like? So how about a setting where he gains power through breath… a specific breathing?”

In this world, knights can gain power that transcends humans by accepting mana into their bodies through special breathing techniques.

And now, Ragna was making a suggestion to twist that a bit and use it as a setting for the work, and.

“So roughly, a setting where one can draw out the power of the sun through special breathing might be good. For the name of the breathing technique… how about ‘Breath of the Sun’?”

And it would be even better if there was a setting where there are several breathing techniques to face vampires, not just the ‘Breath of the Sun’, depending on the users’ individuality.

In that way, Ragna gave Kaya various advice on how to improve the work “Lulu’s Adventure”, and.

“…Amazing. You’re really amazing, Director. How on earth can you transform “Lulu’s Adventure” into an even greater masterpiece than before in such a short time…!”

As a result, he succeeded in receiving an incredibly admiring gaze from Kaya.

“…..”

By the way, Ragna couldn’t help but feel very burdened by Kaya’s such gaze attack.

That’s because there was not a single original idea of his own in the advice Ragna gave to Kaya.

So Ragna opened his mouth with a fake cough while trying to avoid Kaya’s gaze.

“Well, I think this is enough for revising the settings related to the work. Now the only hurdle left for us is just one.”

“…You mean viewers’ interest in the work.”

At Ragna’s words, Kaya spoke while biting her lip.

“Currently, most imperial citizens prefer watching the anime “Attack on Heaven” over “Lulu’s Adventure”. Even if the quality of “Lulu’s Adventure” has improved incomparably from before, not many people would bother to change channels, abandoning the anime they’ve been watching well so far.”

“That’s right. So I think at this point, we need to draw aggro.”

“…You mean aggro?”

That’s right.

Is it a problem that the work “Lulu’s Adventure” isn’t attracting viewers’ attention?

Then isn’t it a matter of attracting attention with stimulating content to the extent that viewers can’t stand not watching the next episode?

And in this situation, the most effective method boasting history and tradition that can be used is none other than-

“…Killing one of the characters. There’s no more effective way to attract people’s attention than someone’s death.”

But shortly after, Kaya opened her mouth with a very troubled expression.

“…But in the work “Lulu’s Adventure”, there aren’t many characters who play a big role other than the protagonist Luka and the final boss Ian, so even if we kill one of the characters, it probably won’t have much effect….”

Moreover, since the final boss ‘Ian’ had to die in the conclusion part for the work’s development, there was virtually no character who could be killed.

At those words from Kaya, Ragna shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, I don’t think so. Don’t we still have one character we can kill?”

“…Pardon?”

“Of course, we’re going to kill everyone else too. Starting from the protagonist’s father to his friends, his master, everyone. But, I meant that these alone might lack impact a bit.”

“…Hmm.”

…No, I think that would be enough.

However, as always, Ragna’s thoughts far surpassed Kaya’s imagination.

“In that sense, what do you think about killing off Luka, the protagonist of “Lulu’s Adventure”, in a flashy way and then replacing the protagonist anew?”

“…?”

Um… so….

Who are you killing, and what are you replacing?