After meeting up with Hiroshi, Alex called Ueno and went to lunch with her. Aya will be touching down here in Tokyo in an hour and they will meet at the game studio he mentioned. Need to record Aya's voice as well for the voice bank. 

They were in Akihabara taking the cab there in a quaint Konbini eating omelet rice. A rather staple food for the Konbini here but Alex prefers some peace and quiet in a small Konbini store with Ueno. 

Having Ueno here was a boon, she acts as a secretary of sorts delegating tasks around the company freelance, and hired Arubaito that applied to the Anteiku team last minute. Apparently,

Alex knew she was in the school student council but he never would have thought she was this competent even without any guidance. 

All this while, Alex thought that his childhood friend only comes once in a while to play with him and his sister and occasionally cook for them.

he's been taking her presence for granted, even now she is doing her best to do hat he asks without any questions.

Is this what it feels like to have a girlfriend? Having a girlfriend might be nice .. once things settle down.

Now that Alex has assimilated with The Kenichi version in this world, he is far milder, and calmer and retains some aspects of brashness from Alex Walker from the previous world, he can think from both point of view, and clashes of opinion doesn't come often but there's is still some sense of dissonance when it comes to what each personality wanted to express themselves.

Most choices find a middle ground in between and sometimes both.

Right now? Alex is scrolling and checking the chatter on what happened in Comiket, a few other participants have stressed their discontent with the organizers of this year's Comiket as well for certain haphazard regulations imposed last minute, 

Things are certainly turning into a dumpster fire. Ueno is eating her omelet rice happily while listening to the Vocaloid test music I've made on the bullet train when we arrive here in Tokyo.

She seems to really like the song at least.

"Just be friends lalalaa-! Just be friends* om nom*"

Alex can't help but smile at his adorable friend's antics. Ueno notices Alex was staring at her and quickly averted her eyes in embarrassment as she remove the earphones and kept them closed.

Alex can't help but tease her and said " Enjoying the music and lunch? "

She pouted after finishing her meal and said " You're enjoying this too much Kenichi kun"

When she's mad, she will sometimes revert to polite greetings instead, that's how Alex knew she was genuinely embarrassed by that.

" So not gonna say My first name huh? What if I told you I made a new song"

Design by fruity loops of course. Her eyes shine brighter than stars when Alex mentioned some new music. ." Really?! Can I hear it Alex please?"

Back to Alex now are we? Alex just shrug it off and said

" Better yet, I can teach you how to make music, and you can sing it yourself. the song is partially complete."

Alex prepares his laptop and click the program FL studio and showed her how he makes the music  and show her how easy it is

"Here's how to make a good melody, start with a simple chord progression, then add some filler notes like this..."

Alex inserted a few prompts and clicks that seem quite easy and intuitive as the program seems easy to use and pretty self-explanatory. Doesn't take a musical genius to operate this program, and Alex has already fine-tuned this program by taking much inspiration from free-to-app software from his old world.

"add some filler notes for some tension to the chords, add some ambient layer, add anything you want really, there's the tab here you can choose and pic from the program like a top line and baseline, you could even add what sort of instrument you want with some effects and...you're done"

Ueno's eyes sparkled as she stared at the program and how easy it is to do. Alex knew that she wanted to be a seiyuu, but being a teenager, he understood that sometimes, young adults don't really know what they want till they see something better, Idol? Seiyuu? Actress? does it even matter? why not all of it? he has seen Idols turn seiyuu turn International superstars in his past life.

As long as you're in the entertainment industry, an actor can become a Director too with the right connections and funding, maybe showing her how to make music will broaden her horizons and not limit her talents and interest within just being a Seiyuu. He wants what's best for Ueno and leaves her many choices for the future.

"Amazing! I knew you made music with that voicebank software, but I didn't think you made something like this, wouldn't everyone want to make music easily? Alex...this could be revolutionary, I don't think there's something like this in the market right now"

"Come on, I have a mini program for a phone you can use, that should get you started when you're bored"

"Really? There's even a mobile version?!"

Alex just smiles and sends a small file to her phone number, Ueno looks at her phone and clicks accept on the email to download the app. It doesn't cost a lot of space too.

" Show me what sort of music you can make Ueno, we could make an album together, just the two of us for ourselves, or maybe you can make your own music, become an Idol and a seiyuu, the combo of the industry"

Ueno nodded gratefully "Thanks Alex, I'd like that... let's make a duet! and no sappy songs! I want happy stuff, maybe with food..oh! that's a good idea, a food song!"

"But we have a food song at home"

Alex clicks the Levan Polla music " It's the leek song"

Ueno just laugh at that " The Leek song? haha! nani kore? what do you mean? that's so weird!"

 

......................

Meanwhile elsewhere-

 

"Find dirt on those people, I want the internet to trace those bastards that harm Tochigi sensei's booth!"

The boss of the Anteiku disckscord app wrote on the secret channel meeting with the rest of the Anteiku admins. One of the mods then said 

" I bet it's those JAMP idiots, after disqualifying Sensei Tochigi, me and the Kyoto Otaku Alliance group did some digging that something like this happened before. This isn't the first time it happened but this is definitely the first one that got noticed due to the traction on Kyoto Ghoul"

Another Admin chimed in and said " Oh yeah, back when I was in high school, there was this ninja series that got the axe from serialization too, The execution of the story was weird since it was a one-shot but since it was about to be serialized, The Author posted the original version on a forum but it was taken down after that"

Another admin said something similar " Oh yeah, a similar series happened to one called Escalflowne ...but that mangaka got into debt so back then I didn't think any of it"

The boss of the dickscord posted various pictures of people on the channel " Did some digging on my own too using the onion network, Currently, JAMP shares are being bought over by a third party from South Korea, Most of the decision-making doesn't seem to come from the Editorial department since two years ago"

Another admin chimed in " Baka- if I have an AK for every idiot that thinks they know best about our otaku culture, I'll headshot every single one of them, Blyad Svo-lach the lot of them! Ye-Bat!"

"Mind your language, We came here to solve the problem, Anyway...the boss found an anonymous post, with the fixture being destroyed within the Comiket Auditorium. Volunteers are flooding the place as we speak so this won't happen again"

The boss grunted and upload another picture

" One of the committees, I suspected within these three took matters into their own hands, Deal with them discreetly, preferably if their bank account suffers for what they did."

One of the admins countered and said "They probably didn't know any better, JAMP might have just ordered them to do it and they don't have any choice, this is how our society follows instruction and hierarchy, we aren't Anonymous, this isn't how we do things."

"Tch, maybe we should, at least they made a difference, didn't that one girl in Nova Scotia commit suicide, and the hacktivist group look into it and reopen the investigation and found out that it was actually murder? Japan doesn't have that"

"We are doing that on a daily basis comrade, Our overwatch group and volunteers keep our streets clean, even some of the local gangs turn a new leaf, like those couriers from Anteiku riding their zephyrs. Pretty funny guys if you ask me, very enthusiastic and they are helping out, That only applies here in Hokkaido unfortunately, the rest of the region is still a mess yeah?"

the other Admins seem to grumble in acceptance.

"It is, and...there are minor setbacks to do what the folks in Sapporo did, here in Kyoto, things are harder due to the Yakuza and local police intervention, some of our members have been arrested for trying to help"

"Back to topic guys, how do we find evidence to punish these guys? any evidence from the video feed within the Auditorium?"

"My friend is combing the surveillance video as we speak if we find anything. we will let you know. It's just a matter of time before we find something usable. They tried to delete the video but my friend knows how to recover deleted video from the digital drive, it's choppy at best, but we will find something"

Another admin complained

"Why are JAMP and Comiket acting so shady? Is this really what is happening to our otaku cultures? these bastards don't deserve to be in it! That's the last time I'm buying anything from JAMP! I knew that most mangaka didn't get paid a lot and assistants get paid low minimum wages but interfering with the creators directly?! The otaku industry is collapsing!"

The boss stepped in and finalize the meeting.

" Uncover the videos and scrub them, and send the evidence to law enforcement and media, if they won't act, we will force them to act, Get our people to act on the first day of Comiket this Saturday, the day will be packed and busy and the crowd will be more than the usual uptake this year, expect problems to occur, especially when it comes to Tochigi sensei. I'm sure he will do something unconventional soon, keep your eyes open and react accordingly, I have news that there will be an Advertising campaign dropping tonight"

"insider stuff again huh boss? That's why you're the owner" one of the admins joked about it.

" Hahaha! Our boss knows all the info! it's tonight? maybe I have an idea about it. It's probably a new series"

the rest of the admin got worked up

"A new series from Tochigi?! I thought he was debuting Kyoto Ghoul on Comiket. what's this about a new series drop?"

"Just wait, after all! I did the inking myself!"

the rest of the admin was shocked by this, The boss could only sigh in exasperation.

"!!!"

"Hey Bestochigi, you're actually Tochigi's assistant aren't you?"

"hahaha!"

......................................

Shueseisha HQ- Jamp Kabushiki gaisha Chiyoda Tokyo

Sonomiya Akechi, The Head Chief Editor from Jamp is sitting in her office alone reviewing the mess that one of their shareholders and marketing Director did, the intervention was swift and came directly from Shiesha the parent company, Something like this has happened before but this is how it is done here in the manga industry. 

Shareholders, while most of them don't have the ability to intervene in the day-to-day operations of the company, Unfortunately, the majority of shares started to move around the company roughly several years back, emergency decision voted the majority and intervene directly in the company policy.

This has made Sonomiya jaded and burned out, She's already 65 years old this year and passed her retirement years by a few months. Perhaps it's time to retire, but if she did, things would escalate far worse than she can predict, The recent incident involving Maya Gozen and her backing had the shareholders move the politicians to create some sort of policy that will enable the manga and anime industry to be shared and owned by foreigners. 

And they are succeeding. 

She's only an Editor in the scheme of things, Hojo could actually do some good since he owns some shares of JAMP, but all hope went down the drain when he quit and sold all of his shares and went incognito. Sonomiya isn't able to contact any of her connections. Whatever happened in the Shueisha definitely alerted Shokakugan Incorporated.

Their orders for her were to pull back and send her abroad to America to work under a new subsidiary called Viz Media. Since the war ended a few years ago, Japan hasn't exactly stabilized as a country, economically, and socially and crime is still at an all-time high with the emergence of the Yakuza taking huge stakes in the political landscape in Japan.

The country is going to shit, and she could only watch while the company she toiled for 20 years, turn hands into foreign enemies. The manga industry was just about to recover after the war propaganda act and the industry took years to shift the origin of the industry from blood war and violence into something more acceptable for the general public to this day.

a knock on the door alerted her and her colleague came in bringing tea and coffee.

The man serves Sonomiya the drinks and sits directly opposite her on the office table looking grim as the evening sky. Sanomiya drank her tea and look at the person and asked

"What are you doing here Matsuyama? Aren't you supposed to be in Hiroshima right now?"

the man shakes his head and then sighed " They closed down the Shikoku regional branch yesterday and transferred everyone to another region. Something is going on with all these reshufflings and most of the old members were either separated or sent to another company unrelated to the manga industry"

"What?"

Sanomiya was shocked, why wasn't she alerted of this? She checked her email real quickly but there was nothing. Not even a memo. 

"And you're here because...?"

her colleague look very conflicted and said

" I heard some things... Sano, they..the higher-ups decided to pin the blame on you. they are creating a scapegoat for the recent share falls and with what happened during the competition, it got too much International recognition, the government doesn't like it when Japan is getting embarrassed like this on the world stage. "

Sanomiya couldn't even say anything, she was devastated by the news.

"Even if that wasn't our decision? What about Aya Gozen? Wasn't she the main instigator of this narrative?"

Matsuyama shakes her head and said " That woman quit and is currently in South Korea, I heard that from one of the young editors that posted in the local chat group, Of course, ordinarily, we thought it was only hearsay but that woman had some sort of backing from the higher up Sano..this is a setup"

She could only nod in resignation.

"What are you gonna do Matsuyama? This isn't the same company I gave my soul to, they spit on the spirit of Shushin Koyo, (lifetime employment), I can see the era of that practice is coming to an end"

Matsuyama nodded and said

" All of the main bran Editors were sent an invitation from the Parent company personally by the President's aide, Shogakukan Inc is intervening in this mess, Most of us will be moved to America while others will work directly under the Hitotsubashi group or...simply retire if they wanted to"

Sanomiya looked surprised now.

"Yes, I've received a directive too from the President himself this afternoon to move into Viz Media and work together with our American distributor and partners. It's certainly much better than being here when this company is being devoured"

Matsuyama nodded

" I've got a friend from Shogakukan, the politicians will intervene and things will get ugly with Jamp and everything under the subsidiary, foreign interference to this degree without any FDI oversight, Some say it the Chinese, but my friend says it might be more than that... South Korea is lobbying for something as well and Japan is right in their crosshairs"

Sanomiya shakes her head and instead, asks...

"Why the manga industry? Japan is an isolationist country that doesn't exactly ?"

Matsuyama could only look at Sanomiya with a confused look and said " No clue, but something definitely triggered the industry in that country to suddenly intervene in our Manga and Animation industry directly"

Sanomiya stood up and took an envelope under her table and put it on her desk, it was a resignation letter.

"Whatever it is, perhaps the upper boss would know more, If this involves the Hototsubashi group directly, we are looking at a corporate war at a global scale, this matter is far too big for whatever it is we're doing, I'm taking the leap of faith and headed to America, are you coming?"

Matsuyama took out two tickets, flight tickets to San Francisco California.

"Everything has been arranged by upper management, whatever it is we have here, we should leave it and head there directly, any more delays and things might escalate into something worse"

Sanomiya nodded and gave a small laugh when she contemplates what is happening right now.

" Corporate espionage and hostile takeover in the manga industry? never thought I'd see the day to live in this same concept. I thought such things only exist in the manga, I'm getting too old for this"

Sanomiya grunted but Matsuyama just laugh and said "Hahaha! My daughter said the same thing! you should meet her, she's downstairs with the rest of my family and uhh...yeah, you can stay with us if you want. I know you don't have anyone.."

"It's fine my friend, thanks for the offer...I'd like that"

Matsuyama hummed and said

"I might retire in America in a few years... maybe leave the reigns to the younger generation."

Sanomiya look at her friend directly and scoff

" You know you're at least ten years younger than me.  Eat healthier fool and exercise. I'll teach you some of my daily Aikido practices when were' in America"

"oh crap!"

Sanomiya stopped and look at her friend when he said that "What is it?"

" Eigo wakarimasen.. I don't speak a lick of English...why did the Upper guys send me there?!"