"Here it comes, here it comes!"
"Fuck, I've never felt time pass so slowly!"
"The long-awaited Akame ga Kill! is finally airing! Big Shot Fang, I'll have your babies!"
"The whole screen is full of horny bastards!"
"..."
At seven in the evening, Akame ga Kill! aired right on schedule. Almost at the same time, all the viewers were refreshing the ACG Community page.
Just a moment ago, the ACG Community had only the promotional PVs for Star Dream and Akame ga Kill!, but the next moment, a full episode of Akame ga Kill! had appeared.
There was no need for any unnecessary talk. The viewers who had been waiting impatiently simply clicked on the player and pressed play.
The instant Akame ga Kill! opened, a dense barrage of comments swept across the screen. Quite a few users' computers even froze for a moment.
Left with no choice, many viewers could only turn off the barrage comments and wait for the peak period to pass.
The anime began with a carriage traveling through a barren wilderness. Halfway there, it encountered a terrifying monster.
"E-Earth Dragon~!"
Just as the Earth Dragon was about to attack the carriage, a sword-wielding boy suddenly charged out.
The boy leaped into the air. Amid flashes of sword light, the Earth Dragon was hacked into pieces, its entire body spraying blood as it died.
"Holy shit, Tatsumi is so cool!"
"Burn, Tatsumi!"
"666, Big Shot Fang really didn't lie to us. This is truly an anime with super-hot-blooded battles."
"Who still dares say my husband is the Ultimate Healing Mentor? Step forward and I'll give you a buff!"
"..."
Tatsumi appeared first at the very beginning of the anime, and the barrage of comments exploded on the spot.
They had watched plenty of action-oriented television series and movies, but because of technological limitations, they had always felt that those battle scenes were missing something.
Anime was different, though. Akame ga Kill! had given them a huge surprise right from the start.
The scene of Tatsumi fighting the Earth Dragon just now, with sword light filling the entire screen, was exactly the kind of scene they had imagined. It could be said to have perfectly displayed the essence of battle.
At this point, quite a few viewers even wondered whether they had misunderstood Fang Zheng.
Star Dream had given rise to countless depression sufferers, and Fang Zheng had consequently been jokingly called the Ultimate Healing Mentor.
But thinking about it carefully, the Annual Best Creator Competition required an anti-war theme. How could a story related to war possibly be warm and comfortable?
Many people apologized to Fang Zheng in the barrage, saying that they had misunderstood him and should not have called him a healing maniac.
"I feel like something's not right~"
In a luxurious hotel room, a slender beauty lay lazily on the bed. She wore a silk nightgown, and her smooth little feet swung back and forth in the air.
A poster was displayed beside the beauty's bed. It was the Demon Possession poster that Fang Zheng had once given away in a program raffle.
Looking at the words Fang Zheng had personally written on the poster—"I once dreamed of roaming the world with a sword, but two died the moment I left the village"—the beauty furrowed her brows tightly. As she watched the anime playing on her laptop, she kept feeling that something was wrong.
As Big Shot Fang's Number One Simp, she had become hopelessly enamored with anime ever since Star Dream first emerged, and that feeling had continued until today.
"Could it be that Big Shot Fang really changed his style?"
The beauty looked puzzled. After Fang Zheng had teased his fans on Weibo, she had begun to feel that the Big Shot Fang she worshipped might not be a particularly proper person.
But the Akame ga Kill! playing on the computer truly had nothing to do with depressing people. Instead, it was filled with a thrilling, blood-pumping atmosphere.
The exhilarating battle scenes were slightly bloody, but no matter how she looked at them, they had nothing to do with making people depressed.
The beauty shook her head. She decided to watch a little longer before making up her mind. After all, the sentence Fang Zheng had written for her back then seemed unusual no matter how she looked at it.
The premiere of Akame ga Kill! consisted of only five episodes. This was also the result of careful discussion between Fang Zheng and Zhang Siyu.
In Fang Zheng's view, the fifth episode of Akame ga Kill! was a dividing line. By the end of the first five episodes, almost all of Night Raid's members had appeared, apart from Tsukimi, who joined later.
Moreover, the darkness of the Empire had been skillfully foreshadowed, while the conflict between the two sides had gradually surfaced and grown sharper. The viewers' tension and anticipation had also been stirred up, and the visual effects had been pushed to the limit.
Just as the viewers thought the following episodes would depict the battles between Night Raid and the Empire, the plot of Akame ga Kill! took a huge turn in the sixth episode.
That huge reversal caused the expectant viewers to explode on the spot.
The reason was that the beloved moe glasses girl in Akame ga Kill! had died—and in an extremely tragic manner.
Countless viewers had been looking forward to the upcoming battle scenes, only for the author to hit them with a divine twist right away. The drastic contrast before and after made many viewers curse furiously.
From the sixth episode onward, Akame ga Kill! could practically be called the beginning of the tragedy that permeated the entire work.
The characters the viewers loved died one after another, placing the cruelest and most heartbreaking scenes nakedly before their eyes. Many viewers even wondered whether the author had suffered some kind of real-life trauma and was deliberately taking revenge on society.
That was why Fang Zheng had aired the first five episodes initially, then slowly released one episode per day.
A release schedule like this could keep the viewers' anticipation alive. It would prevent them from enjoying an overwhelming binge all at once before falling into boredom, while also stopping them from growing impatient due to updates being too slow.
On the other hand, Fang Zheng could use the time during Akame ga Kill!'s broadcast to prepare his new work.
Although most new anime in his memories updated once a week, he did not plan to do the same.
With one episode per week, a normal twelve-episode anime could last three months. In those three months, Fang Zheng could create several works.
His goal was to promote the ACG world and build an ACG golden age, so the quantity and quality of his works were absolutely the foundation of everything.
Therefore, as long as he kept releasing new works and the anime on the ACG Community continued airing without interruption, he would achieve his goal.
Five anime episodes, lasting more than three hours, were enough for the viewers to finish watching.
However, with the long night stretching ahead, most of the viewers who had finished watching had no desire to sleep. Quite a few even chose to go back and watch the version with barrage comments again.
"Goddamn it, Big Shot Fang, are you a demon? Aria was so kind and adorable just a moment ago, and now she's become a pervert?!"
"The anime just started, and Tatsumi has already lost two childhood friends. Why do I feel like something's not right?"
"Exactly! You're not the only one who feels that way!"
"Could Big Shot Fang be secretly preparing some huge twist?"
"..."
Aria was not an important character in Akame ga Kill! She could, at most, be considered a minor character who merely passed through the story.
That was why, when Fang Zheng had drawn the promotional poster, he had not mentioned her. The viewers naturally knew nothing about her.
When Aria first appeared before the viewers in the anime, many of them were won over by her innocent and kind appearance. Quite a few even came to like this pure-hearted young girl.
When the members of Night Raid first appeared with an attitude of being "all villains," many viewers began to worry about Aria's fate.
But the scene that followed left the viewers completely dumbfounded. It also made them once again experience Fang Zheng's sinister intentions and his morally outrageous plotting.
When Akame and the others laid Aria's family's depravity and crimes bare before Tatsumi, every viewer felt as though they had been slapped hard across the face. Their cheeks burned.
"Wahhh~ This isn't the Aria I liked!"
That was the thought in every viewer's mind at the time. Seeing Aria's personality collapse, they all felt as though their young hearts had been traumatized.
What did I do wrong? Why are you treating me like this?
Many viewers cursed Fang Zheng in secret, saying that he was not human. How could he give such a cute girl a character setting like that? It was simply deranged.
"I knew it! I knew things couldn't be that simple!"
In the hotel, the beauty who had once proclaimed herself to be Big Shot Fang's Number One Simp sprang excitedly from the bed. Looking at the poster hanging beside it, she suddenly understood everything.
"I once dreamed of roaming the world with a sword, but two died the moment I left the village."
"So that's what it meant. So he wrote this sentence because of that plot."
The beauty stared at the poster beside the bed, her fair cheeks puffed up angrily. She could sense what kind of mindset Fang Zheng had been in when he wrote those words.
How was this thanking me for my support as a die-hard fan? He was clearly making fun of me!
The girl angrily smacked the mattress beneath her twice, her lips sticking out in a deep pout. It was obvious that she was unhappy.
Back then, she had declared before all the viewers on the program that she worshipped Fang Zheng. She had even changed her name to "Big Shot Fang's Number One Simp" to express her admiration.
But what happened in the end? The Big Shot Fang she worshipped had actually teased her. It was simply too much!
No! I can't let this go! I've never suffered such a grievance in my entire life!
Suddenly, the beauty's eyes swept over the recruitment advertisement scrolling across the top of the ACG Community. Her eyes lit up.
"Heehee, Big Shot Fang, here I come~"
Her enormous eyes seemed capable of speaking. They sparkled as they spun mischievously. Because of her identity, she had used a voice changer when she contacted the program by phone, so the other party did not even know whether she was male or female.
Fang Zheng was even more clueless. He would absolutely never guess her identity. The enemy was in the light while she was in the shadows. With that, everything would be easy~
Achoo~!
At Qinghui Building, Zhang Siyu pushed open the door to Fang Zheng's office and walked in.
"Director Fang, the premiere viewership numbers for Akame ga Kill! are out." Zhang Siyu carried a document over to Fang Zheng's desk.
"At eight o'clock, one hour after Akame ga Kill! aired, the view count reached seven million. At nine, after two hours, it reached thirteen million. The ten o'clock figures haven't been calculated yet, but they should be no lower than twenty million."
Fang Zheng took the document Zhang Siyu handed him and began reading it carefully.
According to Zhang Siyu's estimate, the view count for Akame ga Kill! would not be lower than twenty million after three hours of its premiere. After all, Fang Zheng's built-in popularity was no joke.
Moreover, before Akame ga Kill! aired, Fang Zheng had conducted a round of promotion. Although his methods had been somewhat improper, the results had been quite good.
Fang Zheng had originally planned to hide at home for a while, but the company was simply too busy. With insufficient staff and only Zhang Siyu holding things together, there was no way for it to operate normally.
Left with no choice, Fang Zheng could only risk being mobbed by fans and return to the company once again.
"Very good. The view count has exceeded my expectations." Fang Zheng wore a faint smile. For Akame ga Kill! to receive more than ten million views in just two hours on its first day was already enough to satisfy him.
"By the way, what do you think of the Membership System for the ACG Community that I mentioned earlier?"
Before you continue