Misfortunes Never Come Alone

Mitsui Chuta gave a cold snort. "At least he has a little self-awareness."

No one took up the thread.

Bandai had walked itself into a dead end on the road of game development.

"Everyone, face reality." A managing director with a head full of white hair leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh. "When it comes to making games, we're outsiders. Sega has already sealed off the road ahead of us. That Gundam Battle Operation of theirs still has long lines in arcades. What do we have to compete with them? That pile of nauseating polygons?"

Yamashina Makoto closed his eyes.

He did not want to admit it, but he had no choice.

The ostrich mentality Bandai's upper management had held before—"we can still save this"—had been mercilessly shattered by reality.

"Then let's discuss the merger proposal again." Yamashina Makoto opened his eyes, his tone weary. "Package the entire game division and hand it over to Sega. This is the topic we shelved at the beginning."

The atmosphere in the conference room grew even heavier.

Handing over the game division was tantamount to admitting Bandai's incompetence.

At the negotiating table, Sega would certainly seize the chance to drive down the price.

"If it were only a problem with the game division, then we could grit our teeth, cut off this rotten flesh, and focus on toys. But look at this. Our backyard is on fire."

The documents were passed around.

The data on the paper was shocking to the eye.

Bandai's long-relied-upon "character toy" business had suffered an unprecedented Waterloo at this point in 1995.

"Who's going to explain Sailor Moon's sales data?" Yamashina Makoto pointed at one of the lines.

That was the absolute pillar of Bandai's girls' toys.

In 1993, toy sales for the