January 11, Friday.
Fei Huang Studio, Animation Production Team.
Huang Sibo and Wu Chuan were busy with matters related to the broadcast of “Delegate Academy.”
The situation with “The Inheritor” was basically settled, with all episodes finishing broadcast this weekend. However, the ratings and viewership of this series were… difficult to describe.
Looking at the current situation, “The Inheritor” failing seemed like a foregone conclusion. With revenue share based on viewership and ratings, they definitely wouldn’t recover their initial investment.
Of course, not every episode of “The Inheritor” performed particularly poorly. When Lu Zhiyao and several other famous actors made cameo appearances in later episodes, and when some grand scenes appeared, both viewership and bullet comments increased.
But overall, this didn’t have much impact on the rating of the entire series.
Even if ratings fluctuated, it was basically just a variation of 0.1 or 0.2, with ratings always hovering around 6 points.
There was nothing to be done about this. By this stage, the ratings for “The Inheritor” could no longer be described as fair or objective—they had completely become a battlefield between two camps.
Some people mindlessly gave high scores, while others mindlessly gave low scores.
The harder original novel fans tried to give high scores to pull the rating up, the harder haters tried to give low scores to drag it down.
Thus, “The Inheritor” ended up with a C-shaped rating distribution with many one-star and five-star reviews—commonly known as the standard rating pattern for marketed garbage films.
Typical bad movies have an L-shaped rating distribution, meaning a large number of one-star negative reviews. But marketing-driven bad movies, because of the existence of paid commenters, have many five-star reviews, though this still doesn’t change the fact that they’re terrible.
So, this C-shaped rating distribution had been ridiculed for a long time.
Huang Sibo had stopped managing “The Inheritor” and had been helping Wu Chuan arrange matters for “Delegate Academy” recently.
After meeting with Meng Chang last time, he already had a clear understanding.
Whether “The Inheritor” would become popular in the future actually had nothing to do with the promotion team anymore—it all depended on the election results in Ukraya.
So there was no point in worrying; they just had to wait.
Rather than getting stuck on such matters, it was better to think more about how to make “Delegate Academy” successful.
Even if “The Inheritor” failed, as long as “Delegate Academy” could succeed, the Inspiration Class project for Terminal Chinese Website authors would have two successes and one failure, which would still sound quite acceptable.
After all, copyright adaptation itself is a high-risk endeavor. A success rate of over 60% would already be considered quite good.
But if “Delegate Academy” also failed, leaving only a success rate of just over 30%, that would be harder to justify.
Although being adapted was already something authors couldn’t ask for more, and even in the case of adaptation failure, the Inspiration Class would still have a strong attraction for them, in the eyes of the outside world, this would undoubtedly be a major blow to both the Inspiration Class and Fei Huang Studio.
The cooperation with AiLiDao website had already been settled, and the first episode could premiere tonight.
Huang Sibo was obviously still a bit worried: “This broadcasting strategy we’ve set, should be fine, right? You’ve confirmed it with Mr. Pei, right?”
Wu Chuan nodded: “Relax, Brother Huang. Mr. Pei has made everything very clear.”
“Mr. Pei said that as a mealtime video, this quality is sufficient, and we must broadcast it quickly—speed is the key.”
“Mr. Pei also said that when negotiating with AiLiDao website, the payment should be calculated based on total views and total viewing time.”
“Doesn’t this perfectly show that Mr. Pei had already planned this when he decided on this production method?”
“And with this production method, creating assets is slow at first, but once the assets are mostly ready, the speed will be much faster afterward. Large quantity is clearly our unique advantage.”
“One episode per day, carving out a path with explosive updates!”
Huang Sibo nodded: “Well, as long as Mr. Pei has approved it.”
When first planning this project, Wu Chuan had investigated many animation companies and then reported to Mr. Pei.
But Mr. Pei wasn’t satisfied with any of them and proposed using game modeling, motion capture, and real-time rendering for production.
Wu Chuan didn’t quite understand the intention but still strictly followed Mr. Pei’s requirements to build a team, headhunt people, and begin production on “Delegate Academy.”
It must be said that getting started was indeed very difficult.
Although the game models in GOG were quite detailed, they were difficult to use directly in anime production. After forming the team, Wu Chuan not only had the writing team work on adapting the script but also organized people to make major revisions to the models and various art resources needed for the anime.
Of course, the gaming department and the GOG project team helped out as well.
After preparing about 70-80% of these resources, Wu Chuan finally began the anime production.
With these resources, things became much simpler. Since everything was rendered in real-time, using actors for motion capture, each episode was only ten minutes long. In one day, between motion capture and post-production, they could produce slightly more than one episode at best, or guarantee at least one episode at worst.
By this calculation, producing seven episodes in five working days should be no problem as long as everyone maintained high efficiency.
Considering this point, Wu Chuan decided to follow Mr. Pei’s requirements and implement explosive updates!
Mr. Pei had positioned “Delegate Academy” quite accurately—it was a mealtime video that didn’t need to be refined to perfection. The most important thing was to provide a large quantity.
Between one episode per week with perfect refinement or seven episodes per week with guaranteed basic quality, the latter was clearly the better choice.
While negotiating with AiLiDao website and conducting early promotions, filming had been ongoing, and they had already produced three episodes by now.
Wu Chuan decided that from the premiere of “Delegate Academy,” they would release one episode per day, maximizing the update frequency!
Weren’t web novelists generally doing daily updates?
As an adaptation of a web novel, this style should naturally be carried forward!
When many anime series updated weekly or even monthly, an anime that could maintain daily updates would definitely surprise viewers!
……
……
January 13, Sunday, late night.
Pei Qian, with two dark circles under his eyes, scrolled through his phone while yawning.
“Staying up until midnight on the 14th! I don’t believe it. Tian Gongzi said something would happen on the 13th, but the 13th is almost over, and nothing has happened!”
“I just felt that Tian Gongzi’s prophetic statement, which seemed like his account had been hacked, was a bit suspicious. What big event could happen on the 13th? I’ve been waiting all day.”
“Anyway, netizens will scold him for me.”
Pei Qian checked AiLiDao website and was relieved to see that “The Inheritor” still had ratings hovering around 6 points.
Yesterday, Saturday, the last two episodes of “The Inheritor” aired back-to-back, completing the entire series.
These two episodes contained an enormous amount of information. The penultimate episode concluded the public safety incident created by Phil earlier, while the final episode very meticulously depicted Phil’s ascent to the pinnacle of superhero power.
The entire public safety incident took about two and a half episodes to narrate, occupying a significant portion of the series.
This was the most heinous thing Phil had ever done. This public safety incident caused a large number of civilian casualties, and Phil used this opportunity to bring down the previously top superheroes and successfully rise to power.
In the previous episode, viewers had just seen Phil devise a conspiracy, causing massive civilian casualties and eliminating many obstructive superheroes through dishonorable means, his hands soaked in blood.
In the next episode, Phil was already surrounded by numerous supporters and citizens, announcing his victory and solemnly swearing to fulfill his responsibilities to all citizens before ascending the throne symbolizing the highest power among superheroes.
This contrast successfully continued the “discomfort” that “The Inheritor” had been giving viewers all along, and could also be said to be the emotional climax of the entire “The Inheritor” story.
Did Phil win? Yes, and quite thoroughly.
If looking at the issue from Phil’s perspective, from a “history is written by the victors” viewpoint, he eliminated opposition, deceived the public, and successfully seized the power belonging to superheroes.
But if looking at the issue from an observer’s perspective, setting aside the purely utilitarian “might makes right” viewpoint, Phil was an absolute piece of garbage without any virtues worthy of admiration or appreciation.
In any case, there was no unsatisfactory ending. This conclusion could be said to be consistent throughout and met the expectations of the vast majority of viewers.
But precisely because of this, the polarized evaluations of “The Inheritor” did not change in any way. Those who accepted the core of this story highly praised it, while those who didn’t accept it still wanted to give it negative scores if they could.
Now that the entire series had finished broadcasting and had been digesting throughout Sunday, Pei Qian felt that the ratings should be settled and finalized, right?
Even if there was still some discussion heat when the final episode just came out, with viewers arguing a few more times, the heat had clearly subsided now. AiLiDao website would definitely remove promotional resources for “The Inheritor,” and there shouldn’t be many new viewers flooding in afterward.
Under these circumstances, could “The Inheritor” still turn its reputation around?
It should be quite unlikely, right?
The only variable was Tian Gongzi’s worrying prophecy.
So Pei Qian had waited through the entire 13th, until midnight on the 14th.
He scrolled through “The Inheritor” ratings again, as well as online reviews and news, but didn’t find any changes.
On AiLiDao website, Tian Gongzi’s prophecy was still hanging there. Many people went to dig up the old post as soon as it was past midnight, ridiculing Tian Gongzi, but Tian Gongzi either had gone to sleep or was pretending not to see—in any case, he didn’t make any response.
He seemed to be playing dead.
“Phew, false alarm.”
“I said with such a big advantage, how could it possibly turn around in one day? That’s impossible.”
“Although I was on edge all day, it was worth it to see Tian Gongzi fail!”
Pei Qian went to bed, feeling perfectly satisfied.