Sora stayed quiet for a few seconds, as if replaying the image of the "Sora" who had existed before him. Whenever he reached back into the original owner's memories, the conclusion was always the same: that boy had never been the type to take care of other people. He was impulsive, spoke without a filter, and had a habit of bumping into others with poorly chosen words-often creating needless friction. He had ability, sure. No one could deny that. But he lacked the kind of attentiveness that didn't show up in results-only in the small details. Compared to that version of him, the difference was obvious.
"People… have to grow up eventually," Sora answered, deliberately vague-something that revealed nothing, yet sounded too reasonable to challenge.
Sumire didn't press. To her, that "change" had an obvious, natural, almost inevitable explanation: Hiroshi Kamakawa's death. It was easy to connect growth to a loss that rips childhood away by force, and without realizing it, she accepted that as the missing piece.
"Still… you've surprised me as a director," she said softly, her voice sheltered by the night wind. "You're still missing some specific knowledge-technical details-but so far, in the production of Voices of a Distant Star, you haven't dropped the ball. It feels like… if you keep going like this, this project might actually turn into an anime that holds up."
There was caution in her tone, like she was testing the ground before putting her weight on it. Even so, it was rare praise.
When she finished, she noticed Sora had stopped.
They were already in the parking lot.
Sora pulled his car key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and before getting in, he paused-looking at her as if organizing what he really wanted to say.
"It's not about 'holding up,'" he replied.
Sumire blinked, not understanding at first.
"What do you mean?"
Sora turned toward her, and the lightness in his eyes hardened into something steadier.
"It's not enough to be 'acceptable.' Not enough to be 'an okay anime.'" He spoke slowly, as if every word was a decision. "I want to make something that anime fans here watch and… don't forget. Something that hits them inside. A work that, ten or twenty years from now, still comes back to them the moment someone mentions the title."
Fine snow kept falling, almost invisible against the dark.
"An anime that you and I… won't regret having made, even years from now."
Sumire's eyes widened slightly-small, but enough to give her away. She stared at Sora across the hood, and for an instant her expression shifted, as if what he'd said had brushed against a memory she'd kept tucked away.
"You… don't think that too?" Sora asked, simple and direct.
Sumire kept looking at him, and the scene as it was-the cold, the night, the boy smiling while saying something that sounded too big for someone eighteen-pulled her mind far away.
She saw herself as a child again, talking to friends with certainty and light in her eyes, saying that one day she'd enter the anime industry to make stories that made people feel-the kind audiences loved, the kind that changed something inside you.
Then, like a shock, the contrast hit.
In five years of work, Sumire had thrown herself fully into multiple productions. She worked, corrected, revised, and met impossible deadlines. But when she tried to remember… there wasn't a single title-not one-she could say she truly loved. What she'd helped create, most of the time, were disposable works: automatic cuteness, easy appeal, shallow stories-anime that ran through an entire cour and still left half the audience unable to remember the protagonist's name. How could anyone be moved by that, if even she didn't enjoy it?
When a dream becomes a paycheck, passion loses ground. And without noticing, the flame shrinks-until it starts to feel normal not to feel anything at all.
"I… of course I think that," Sumire answered, almost on reflex, before her brain even finished catching up.
The words slipped out too fast, like she was afraid to admit it-but also afraid to deny it.
The air turned strange for a few seconds. A short silence, but heavy. Sumire felt her face warm in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. She opened the door and got into the car a little too quickly, as if she needed to hide from that moment.
Outside, Sora held onto the image: the brief light that had flashed in her eyes, as if something old had woken up.
He smiled, sat in the driver's seat, and started the engine. The sound broke the silence.
"Alright… I said I'm buying dinner," he said, trying to pull the conversation back to something normal. "What do you want to eat? Winter in Tokushima is annoying… it's not even seven yet and it's already pitch-black."
Sumire, her voice less rigid now, answered with a lightness she hadn't shown before.
"I know a ramen place. Their ramen is really good."
Sora raised an eyebrow, half amused.
"Ramen? I said I'm treating you. Are you sure you don't want a more… 'proper' restaurant?"
"No." Sumire said immediately, as if the decision had already been made. "I want ramen. I used to go there a lot when I was in college… but after I graduated, I never went back."
Sora didn't argue. He just drove.
…
When January fully arrived, the production gears began to turn with real momentum. With Part A of the storyboard moving forward, character designs on track, the background art outsourcing secured, key animation tasks distributed, external teams contacted for in-betweening, and the initial layouts finally being drawn, Voices of a Distant Star officially entered the rhythm of an actual production.
Dream Animation moved as a whole.
And Sora-who had been working alone in his office-ended up relocating to the middle of the studio: an open area on the floor where anyone could reach him quickly. Not because he wanted to. Because he had to.
From that point on, every department needed him constantly. Internal coordinators, outsourced team leads, background artists, animators, schedule managers-everyone came to align decisions, clear doubts, and confirm direction.
That was the weight of being a director: everything ran through him. Every stylistic choice. Every tonal decision. Every small detail that, left unchecked, could turn into inconsistency on screen.
Storyboards, character designs, casting, background aesthetics, color, camera language, pauses, subtext… Voices of a Distant Star wasn't just a stack of parts. It was a single body that needed unity-and that unity depended on Sora's "yes."
Strangely, the storyboard for Part B was flowing better than Part A. His body had found the pace, his hand moved with less strain, and his mind didn't need to "warm up" like before. But at the same time, January brought a weight he hadn't felt in those first two weeks.
The volume of demands exploded.
"Director, about that giant mecha… look at this shape. What do you think?"
"Sora, in the layout… if the background uses this kind of texture, does it work for you?"
"The alien ruins on Mars… do you want something more corroded? More 'wasteland'? Or a cleaner sci-fi look?"
"The thunderstorm on Jupiter… you said you want it to be shocking, scary, grand-so how exactly? You need to explain it better."
Meeting after meeting. Endless calls. Questions about details that seemed small, but would ruin everything if they were wrong. And through it all, deadlines running like tomorrow didn't exist.
Sora started finishing his days with the feeling that he'd been squeezed down to the bone.
By mid-January, another milestone arrived: the voice casting.
Because it was a short film with a limited budget, Voices of a Distant Star didn't have the weight to lure in the famous names dominating the season. Top voice actors were locked into ongoing shows, packed schedules, and contracts that left no room for "side work."
Still, for mid-tier professionals and newcomers trying to break in, it was a precious opportunity. And there was one key point: the project needed only two voice actors.
Five candidates showed up for Noboru.
Thirteen competed for Mikako.
In the audition room, Sora and Sumire put on their headphones and began to listen.
The first voice came through.
"'Noboru… I just wish we wouldn't find anything anymore. I want to go home already…'"
The performance was "correct" on paper, but lifeless. It sounded like reading-someone repeating sounds with the wrong rhythm, without truly carrying fear, longing, distance.
Sora and Sumire exchanged a brief look.
Next.
Another candidate entered, introduced herself, tried a few lines. Better. Still not enough. Something was missing-something you couldn't teach with quick practice: the feeling of a girl too far away, trapped somewhere time had no mercy.
And yet, in the middle of so many average attempts, one voice stood out.
When she spoke as Mikako, Sora felt a real ache in his chest. The fear of never returning, the helplessness of being unable to touch the future with her hands, the longing turning into physical pain… it was all there. It wasn't just "good technique." It was understanding.
And there was more: she could sing. Really well.
She wasn't famous-no name value, no pre-release "hype." But by then, Sora had stopped counting on that kind of advantage. If the voice was right, that was enough. And the bonus of strong vocals opened an obvious door: the theme song could be handled by her too, without the production needing to chase another cost.
The next day, the decision was finalized. The two leads had their voices.
With that, the recording date was set as well-slotted into the suffocating calendar like another impossible piece that still, somehow, had to fit.
And while Dream Animation sank deeper into work, the winter market in Japan entered the phase where everything seemed to be "on fire" with ratings and chatter. The big national networks, with heavy investment, dominated the noise. But strong regional broadcasters-like the affiliated network covering Shikoku and surrounding areas-still carried an audience too large to ignore.
That station's coverage spread wide enough to reach multiple neighboring regions, adding up to tens of millions of viewers. Compared to Tokyo, it looked small. In the right context, it was still a stage too big to dismiss.
And as was common among fans, many people tracked the schedule directly through the broadcaster's official website-watching what came next, what replaced what.
As late January approached, more people noticed that a short anime titled Voices of a Distant Star was scheduled to premiere on March 30, taking the slot left behind by the finale of Maken-shi Sharuru!.
Most didn't care. Short films were too short. "It probably won't have a real story." "It's just filler." If there was nothing else to watch, maybe they'd put it on.
But Japan was large. And where there's volume, there are always exceptions.
Some fans were already tired of empty shows, recycled formulas, stories that began and ended without leaving a mark. For them, a short film wasn't a flaw-it was an invitation. One episode. One clean hit. If it was bad, the time cost was low. If it was good… it might be exactly what they'd been craving for a long time.
And when they opened the presentation page on the station's website and saw the updated design images of the mecha-that huge machine with a cockpit, with presence, with the promise of action-some people's interest spiked too sharply to ignore.
"Voices of a Distant Star? What kind of title is that?"
Then the next thought came, inevitable.
"You can climb in and pilot that? That's sick."
From the synopsis, it sounded like space war. Like aliens. Like something that wasn't the season's usual flavor.
And then a hypothesis began to spread through small groups-quick conversations, short posts: what if this was a test?
The industry did this sometimes. Projects too expensive to gamble on without proof would first appear as a short OVA, an experiment, a pilot chapter. If it pulled ratings, if the audience reacted, if discussion grew… then the bigger project would come.
"What if, after this short, the studio makes a full series in this universe?"
A story of combat, seas of stars, giant machines fighting aliens… just imagining it was enough to excite part of the audience. Not because romance or melancholy sat at the center of those theories, but because that combination of elements sounded new enough to spark real curiosity.
And slowly, Voices of a Distant Star began to be talked about.
It was still small. Still just a beginning.
But for the first time, the project's name slipped past the studio walls… and started to exist out there.
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