A show about a mysterious success story.
Summary:
- Trillion Game is a manga created by the author of Dr. Stone that focuses on the story of an IT startup.
- Its success lies in Inagaki's unique storytelling.
- It already had a successful TV series adaptation, but now it’s been announced that the anime will be made.
Successful startup stories were previously reserved for Hollywood biopics, but they were brewing in the manga industry, too. Meet Trillion Game — a thriller that lets you follow the journey of two friends, a charismatic entrepreneur Haru Tennouji and an IT genius Manabu "Gaku" Taira, who have a goal of amassing one trillion dollars with their joint work.
IT can be fun!
The manga series, written by Riichiro Inagaki, who's known for Dr. Stone, and illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami, was first published in seinen magazine Big Comic Superior in December 2020 and since then seven volumes have been released. It has an autobiography structure of sorts: the events that led to Haru and Gaku's success are told from Gaku's perspective as he reminisces over them when they become the first Japanese people in the 21st century to be featured in the top 10 of The World's Billionaires list.
This premise works because of Inagaki's unique way of storytelling: he makes boring things like coding or communicating with partners fun, just like he made science infodumps fun in Dr. Stone. The difference is while Dr. Stone is a pure shonen with a little bit of educational aspect thrown here and there, Trillion Game takes a more slice-of-life approach, delving deeper into the psychology of entrepreneurship and the troubles of managing an emerging company. One of the main mysteries of the story that has yet to be resolved is where is Haru: only Gaku is here now to narrate their path to success.
More successful than you may think
While at first some people believed that the manga would be axed quite soon, it ended up becoming quite popular: the realistic way in which the characters solve troubles, both IT- and human-related, and also the relationship dynamic between strong-willed Haru and timid Gaku, alongside some mysteries that are being slowly uncovered in the story, is what kept its ratings not only enough for continuation, but also high enough for a few adaptations. In 2023, a TV series was released on Netflix that covered the first few volumes of the manga. And now it was announced that there will be an anime, but, sadly, no news about the release date, the length of the show, or the studio adapting the story.
We can speculate that it will be a seasonal show, and the first season will cover the first four volumes. We know, however, that it will be released on the Kadokawa streaming platform.