"I haven't read Anohana, but after reading the first chapter of To the Moon... I have a feeling this won't do well once it's serialized."
"Hey, we're all friends here, no need to be polite. Honestly, I think the popularity ranking for the first issue of To the Moon will be in the bottom three, even with the support of her existing fans. Whether this novel can pick up steam depends entirely on the later chapters."
"Yeah... on the other hand, look at this other submission from Minamijo. Wow. This Fate of the Rainbow by Airi is excellently written!"
"Let me see..."
The group of editors fell silent for a few minutes as they read. Soon, the review room became lively.
"Whoa, this is actually pretty interesting."
"Truly. The first chapter is such a page-turner. This author has some serious writing chops."
"From what I've gathered, Airi has spent her entire career focusing on the youth fantasy romance genre. Now that's a smart move. Unlike Shiori Takahashi. I just looked up her bio; her first novel was romance, her second was friendship, and now this To the Moon is sci-fi? She's all over the place."
"But we'll have to see how the plot progresses. It's a ten-issue limit, and telling a complete, high-quality story in ten chapters is no simple feat."
"In contrast, the novel by that Minamijo author named 'Nanzawa' is quite mediocre. In the sea of submissions for this year's competition, it's just middle-of-the-road."
After the Minamijo submissions were reviewed, the staff moved on to the other prefectures without a moment's rest.
A few days later, the committee confirmed that all fifty-one novels had been reviewed.
They published the titles and author information on the official website. Except for Haruto and Reina, most authors were willing to disclose their real identities. Fans of Shiori Takahashi and Airi were naturally disappointed to see their favorite authors still hiding behind pen names, but that disappointment was quickly replaced by excitement.
The title of Shiori Takahashi's new work was finally known.
To the Moon.
Although only the title was announced and no other details were revealed, it didn't stop Anohana fans from swarming the Ascent of New Gods website. Every entry had its own sub-forum for fans to discuss the work. Normally, fans of one author wouldn't go out of their way to raid other forums and bring negative attention to their favorite creator. But on this day, many people noticed that the atmosphere on the official forums was a bit strange.
Many Anohana fans still hadn't recovered from the emotional ending of the previous book, and they took every opportunity to act as voluntary promoters. Since everyone was a competitor anyway, they threw decorum out the window and began advertising in other sub-forums.
"The most heartwarming novel of the year, the healing masterpiece Anohana, is now on sale across Japan!"
"The latest work from Minamijo's top author, Shiori Takahashi! Go read Anohana, the ultimate masterpiece!"
"Anohana. Watch it and be healed for life, or miss it and regret it for life!"
Promotional posts like these flooded the official website. This situation left light novel fans from other regions with a massive question mark over their heads. They initially thought Minamijo fans were just being rude, but when they checked the IP addresses of the posters, they found that while Minamijo was the most common, there were fans from Hokkaido, Kyushu, Osaka, and Tokyo as well.
Did this Anohana really have that many die-hard fans? They were even storming the official Ascent of New Gods forums to promote it?
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