Note: This Chapter is Re-Translated on 6 / 15 / 2025
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Chapter 30: Refusal
If Friday's box office surge had made Bandai realize Fate/Stay Night's hidden potential, then Saturday's explosive numbers solidified their belief that they had made the right call.
Despite still only screening in 25 theaters due to scheduling constraints, Fate/Stay Night's Saturday box office soared to a staggering 19.46 million yen.
That meant an average of nearly 800,000 yen per theater—numbers typically only seen with blockbuster hits.
Fresh off the train from Fuyuki to Tokyo, Shinji was already grinning when he learned the full-scale expansion was a go.
Unfortunately, that joy was short-lived.
Because as soon as he arrived at Bandai headquarters, the second bomb dropped—Toho and Shochiku theaters had outright refused to screen Fate/Stay Night.
"What the hell do you mean Toho won't show Fate/Stay Night?!"
Shinji slammed his hand on the meeting room table, voice sharp and eyes blazing.
"Why?!"
He had every right to be furious.
Shochiku's refusal was annoying, but they only owned around 20 theaters—a minor setback at worst.
But Toho Cinemas? They operated over 50.
That might not sound like a lot by future standards—nothing compared to the likes of Wanda or Dadi in China—but in 2003 Japan, with a total of only around 400 theaters, Toho was the second-largest chain in the country.
Worse yet, all of Toho's theaters were located in prime, high-traffic areas.
A ban from them meant massive lost exposure.
So, the moment Shinji burst into the meeting room at Bandai HQ, he practically roared.
"Toho refusing to show my film is pure tyranny! What, just because they're not the distributors, they think they can bury it?! They're the ones who rejected my film in the first place!"
"No, it's not about who the distributor is."
Udagawa Nao shook her head, her tightly furrowed brows showing she was just as irritated.
"I've done some digging," she said. "It looks like this situation has something to do with… film critics."
"…What?"
Shinji blinked. The words hit him like a brick to the face.
Nao went on, her tone sour.
"Apparently, a critic named Kawachi Ippei rallied his colleagues and pressured Toho and Shochiku into refusing to show your film."
Shinji scoffed coldly.
"Busybody critics, sticking their noses where they don't belong."
He still remembered Kawachi's smug, disapproving face.
While Shinji had known critics were more influential than he liked, he hadn't expected them to wield enough influence to make entire theater chains blacklist a film.
"The critics speak… and the cinemas just blindly follow?" he muttered, disbelief in his tone.
Nao sighed. "Kawachi has close ties with both Toho and Shochiku. Their staff say they can't 'abandon the forest just for one tree.'"
In other words, Toho and Shochiku saw Kawachi's critic circle as worth far more than one rookie director—no matter how promising.
After all, a director might release a few films a year, but a top-tier critic like Kawachi could influence the success of hundreds.
"Tch."
Shinji clicked his tongue, eyes narrowing.
"So, why the hell is that vulture Kawaji trying to kill my movie? Don't tell me it's because of some high-minded 'artistic purity' nonsense and he's just out to erase my non-artistic garbage from the world?"
"It's Kawachi, not Kawaji," Nao corrected him with a shrug. "And I think it all comes down to fear. Your film was one of the ones he publicly condemned. If it ends up doing well at the box office… their words stop meaning anything."
For critics, their power lay in one thing: their mouths.
If they said a film was good and it performed well—great.
If they trashed a movie and it flopped—mission accomplished.
But if a movie they slammed ends up becoming a smash hit?
Then that shatters the illusion.
The illusion that critics are gatekeepers of quality.
Their fragile empire, built on the notion that only what they approve of is worth watching, starts to crumble.
Like the line from Iron Man 2:
"If you can make God bleed, people will cease to believe in him."
And if not for this particular parallel-world version of TYPE-MOON, where art films still reigned supreme and critics held significant sway, their influence probably would have been weakened long ago.
Shinji leaned back and asked coolly,
"So what excuse did Toho give? Surely they're not admitting it's because of critics."
Because let's be honest—"we're not screening your movie because a critic told us not to" isn't exactly something you can say in a press release.
Nao's expression shifted into something awkward, borderline amused.
"They said it's because this year's Crayon Shin-chan movie is releasing next week. They're saving screen space for their own film."
Shinji snorted through his nose.
"What a steaming load of crap."
Toho playing favorites with their own productions was hardly new, but this excuse was insulting even by their standards.
Sure, Crayon Shin-chan was a national treasure, but its annual movie box office usually hovered around 1 to 1.5 billion yen—solid, but nothing earth-shattering.
And if Shinji's memory served him right, those numbers would stay stable all the way through the next two decades.
No way Toho hadn't already carved out space for it months in advance.
It was just a flimsy cover—nothing more.
"Tch. If only we had more screens…"
At the end of the day, this entire problem boiled down to supply.
There just weren't enough theaters in Japan.
If they had access to, say, 1,000 cinemas, Toho wouldn't have the luxury to pull this kind of stunt.
The thought suddenly struck him:
Should I just start my own theater chain?
But it passed just as quickly.
His eyes were on the global market, not just this tiny island.
"For now," he asked, "we're good with the rest of the chains, right?"
"Yes," Nao confirmed. "The total number is lower than we hoped, but we've still secured 210 theaters and 812 screens."
"That's plenty," Shinji grinned, sharp and confident.
"More than enough to make Fate/Stay Night a national sensation."
He was practically buzzing with anticipation now.
There was something intoxicating about the idea of forcing those old, self-important critics to eat their words.
Shinji lived for that kind of poetic revenge.
"I never went out of my way to mess with the critics," he said with a grin full of faux warmth. "They came looking for trouble. So don't blame me when I hit back."
With that dangerous glint in his eyes, Shinji began laying out his movie marketing strategy to Nao—one so aggressive it might just shake the foundations of the entire Japanese film industry.
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As the new week began, Bandai's attitude toward Fate/Stay Night changed completely.
Gone was the half-hearted neglect—now, they were fully invested.
Aside from increasing the screening scale to 210 theaters, they allocated a 20 million yen marketing budget.
That might not sound like much, but for Japan's entertainment industry in 2003, it was no small sum.
In this pre-internet era, even if someone gave him a marketing budget in the hundreds of millions of yen, Shinji honestly wouldn't have known how to spend it.
But even with a modest 20 million, the results were spectacular.
Fate/Stay Night began showing up in top newspapers and on primetime TV slots, and the beautifully animated characters paired with explosive action sequences quickly caught the public's attention.
Bandai's real power as Japan's top anime distributor was now on full display.
Under Shinji's directive, they executed a pinpoint marketing campaign targeting the 12-to-25 youth demographic.
Meanwhile, back in Fuyuki, the remaining film crew did their part in fueling the hype.
Even though they couldn't leave the city, Shirou and the others participated in interviews, photo shoots, and promotional segments for TV shows.
But the real star of the PR push?
Arturia.
Bandai even sent a dedicated team to Fuyuki to film her for a series of promotional spots—one of which was an ad for a toy replica of Excalibur.
This all-out blitz of marketing, combined with the film's unrelenting positive word-of-mouth, finally led to a noticeable spike in box office numbers.
In just the first four weekdays of the new week, the film earned 248.94 million yen.
And then the weekend hit—with a staggering 383.74 million yen.
By the end of the week, Fate/Stay Night had dominated the Japanese box office, raking in 630 million yen, officially taking #1 on the weekly chart.
It was Fate/Stay Night's first ever box office crown—and for Shinji, the first major victory of his entire career.
Naturally, Kinema Junpo's Monday edition led with a full-page Fate/Stay Night poster, complete with the headline:
"The Miraculous Dark Horse"
"Tch, Dark horse, my butt," Sakura grumbled as she slapped the newspaper down onto the Matou family's breakfast table.
"My brother being number one at the box office was always going to happen!"
"But Master is still a newbie, right?" Arturia replied between bites of a massive stack of puff pastries, her words nearly unintelligible. "If a newbie gets these numbers, doesn't that make them a dark horse?"
"Please finish chewing before you talk."
Sakura sighed, then turned to look at her brother across the table.
"What do you think, Onii-sama?"
Still flipping through other papers, Shinji didn't even look up.
"Dark horse or not, I don't care—as long as they're saying good things about me. Now help me check the rest."
Japan's massive entertainment industry produced a ridiculous number of daily newspapers, which made finding specific reviews a pain.
So Shinji had no choice but to mobilize the whole household—even calling in the Servants.
Except for Arturia the Bottomless Pit and Berserker, who couldn't turn pages, the rest were drafted into the search effort.
Ultimately, it was Yan Qing who came through first.
"Master, you were looking for bad reviews, right?"
The streetwise Assassin handed him a newspaper.
And there it was—bold headline front and center:
"The Existence of Such a Movie is a Tragedy for Japanese Cinema!!"
Shinji raised an eyebrow—and then smirked.
"So they finally snapped, huh."
Faced with Fate/Stay Night's relentless momentum, the critics could no longer sit quietly on the sidelines.
"Well then. Let the storm come. Let it blow as hard as it wants."
He wore the smug, composed grin of a man with a plan—the kind of smile that screamed "everything is going according to keikaku."
"Tell Udagawa-san—it's time."
He leaned back in his chair, eyes gleaming.
"Let the flame war begin."