In a residential complex in Shikoku, Taiki - a first-year high school student - watched the TV with his eyes glued to the screen.
The ani that had kept him company all winter, The Magic Swordswoman Charlene, was ending. And with the final episode ca that hollow feeling, like soone had quietly switched off a part of his day.
"I'm buying it. I'm buying everything… the Blu-ray, the cosplay outfit, whatever they release," he swore to himself, as if making a vow.
But before he could even finish saying goodbye in his head, the screen went dark. Pure black swallowed the image… and then three words appeared at the center, blunt and unmistakable:
Voices of a Distant Star.
Taiki blinked, caught off guard. He recognized the title - not because he cared about it, but because he practically lived on the station's official forums, keeping up with news about the shows he liked. Wasn't this the short animation that wouldn't air until next week?
It took him a second to get it.
A PV.
A teaser.
Honestly, he didn't care. A single-episode short wasn't the kind of thing he'd plan his life around. But the station had already shoved the PV right in front of him, so whatever… he'd watch it.
The title began to fade, turning translucent, until it disappeared.
And then - suddenly - the screen burst into color.
Under a blazing sunset, a boy pedaled a bicycle while a girl rode on the rear seat. The two of them lifted their faces toward the orange sky, like they were waiting for sothing to happen…
Then it happened.
Seven gigantic humanoid silhouettes tore through the clouds - black chas, heavy as living steel, erging like beasts from the fog. A muffled boom, almost physical, filled the room as they cut through the air at impossible speed, leaving white contrails and a tail of fla that looked like it was slicing the sky open.
Taiki's eyes flew wide.
The seven colossi tangled and spiraled overhead, weaving through one another, carving violent yet beautiful arcs. Their flight paths seed to rip the cloud layer apart, opening channels through the atmosphere like invisible blades.
What… a sight.
What… the hell.
Taiki had never been a cha fan. He'd never cared about "space war" ani. And yet, that single entrance shot grabbed his heart by the collar and refused to let go.
It wasn't that sleek, artificial feeling of a robot modeled in 3D. This was different. You could feel the weight of the linework - the force of hand-drawn animation - like every second had been dragged out of soone with equal parts pain and love.
"Look!" the girl said on-screen, pointing at the silhouettes as they disappeared into the distance.
"It's… beautiful," the boy replied, calm and steady.
They kept watching the sky together, side by side, like that mont belonged to them.
And then - drawn with a refinent far too polished for "just a PV" - the girl, pretty and confident, courage glittering in her eyes, leaned forward over the boy's shoulder, still on the bicycle's rear seat.
"Hey… Asahi… did you know? I… I'm going to pilot that."
The cara rose.
Too fast.
In a blink it punched through clouds, cut across the layers of the atmosphere, swallowed the planet's blue, slipped past the Moon… and by the ti Taiki realized he'd been holding his breath, the image had already reached Mars.
The music erupted into sothing fierce.
And without warning, so did his blood.
Above a colossal crater, a steel cha skimd the surface at supersonic speed. Then, all at once, dozens of barrels snapped open along its back like an arsenal unfolding - and a shower of missiles launched in a single burst.
White trails streaked upward like fireworks. The missiles danced along crooked paths, seemingly patternless, yet sohow carrying a kind of unsettling geotric beauty. Their target was a triangular craft - an aerospace fighter - trying to break away.
But in the very next shot, Taiki saw sothing even more insane.
The cara clung to the missiles… and in the sa instant, a black cha surged into fra, even faster than they were.
As if it were outrunning its own attack.
Spin. Leap. Angle shift. The perspective flipped, flipped again - and the cha that had fired the missiles reached the fighter as if it were playing with the laws of physics.
Its right arm lifted.
A storm of bullets and more missiles erupted toward the target. In a single second, the cara snapped between sky and ground three tis, like the entire world was rotating with it. The fighter split into a ball of fire and plunged down.
Only then did Taiki realize he'd been holding his breath.
That sequence didn't even last three seconds.
And yet it had hooked him completely - like a barb lodged in his throat.
The image cut.
A monstrous thunderstorm surged up from Io, blasting toward Jupiter like a pillar of rage. And above that, in absolute contrast to the violence of space, was the girl inside the cockpit - alone, staring at her phone, lost in silence.
…
Near Pluto, at the edge of the solar system, her cha was seized by tentacles - not ordinary tal, but sothing that felt like a living organism, an alien machine with a predator's presence.
In the next instant, her response ca like instinct.
Machine guns roared, missiles cut through the void, and the blade of light in her hand swept the enemy away with a clean strike. Before the glow of the explosion could fade, the black cha was already rocketing back at impossible speed toward the human mothership.
And then the PV did it again.
That hypnotic kind of "circus" spectacle.
High-speed angle changes, more missiles than you could count, obstacles appearing like ambushes, ruthless alien chas intercepting - and the girl dodging in an impossible ballet: climb, dive, slash diagonally, spin - each sword stroke filling space with collisions and explosions, fireworks tearing open the darkness.
When her cha slipped through the light and entered the human ship, the image vanished.
The music - at its peak - suddenly eased off, like soone had yanked the brake.
Taiki, who had been on the verge of boiling over, felt his blood go cold all at once.
Like getting shocked, and at the worst possible mont, having the power die.
His frustration ca from one simple truth: a PV doesn't comfort you. A PV lights the fire… and leaves without putting the flas out.
On the screen, bold text appeared:
[Voices of a Distant Star - March 30th, 10:00 PM, official broadcast.]
And imdiately after, as if the universe were cruel on purpose, the station rolled into one of those "classic" late-night dicine comrcials.
Taiki stared at the television, frozen.
But his mind wasn't there anymore. It was as if his gaze pierced straight through the screen, the wall, the whole building - flying into deep space, back to that black cha and the brilliant slaughter between humans and aliens.
"What… what ani was that?"
"Voices of a Distant Star…?"
Indignation rose like smoke.
"You've got to be kidding . An ani with this kind of quality, this concept, these battle scenes… and nobody does any promotion before the premiere?" He ranted to the air in his room, like he was cursing the station itself.
If he hadn't happened to glance at the PV after Charlene ended, he would've missed it.
And for soone with years of otaku life under his belt, that was unforgivable.
He'd watched PVs for everything - massive productions, major Tokyo networks - and none of them had made his heart pound like that.
Maybe for people who grew up seeing this kind of thing everywhere, it wouldn't hit as hard. But for him - and for a lot of viewers in the region - it was pure novelty. Explosive. Intoxicating.
Like the difference between hearing about snow and seeing snow for the first ti.
Taiki closed his eyes and replayed it again and again: missiles, machine guns, fighters, alien chas… and the girl - apparently the protagonist - piloting that black machine as if it were part of her body.
It was like watching spirits dance in the void.
The framing. The concept. The elents of the work. And that storyboard… too beautiful, too aggressive, too alive.
He drew in a breath and, without wasting a second, opened his phone and went straight to the station's page for Voices of a Distant Star.
The disappointnt hit fast.
The description was tiny and bland - less than a hundred words. There were only a few reference images of the male lead, the female lead, and the cha.
That was it.
"They're not taking it seriously," ford in his mind.
If the station had even the slightest expectation, they wouldn't treat the show like a hidden footnote on the site.
He read the credits, morizing nas like clues: directed by Sora Kamakawa, assistant direction by Sumire, chief animation supervision by Haruto, produced by Yu Animation.
And then he did what any fan does when sothing grabs them: he went straight to the forum.
The mont he entered the ani section of the official site, his screen flooded with new threads - one after another, like the whole world had woken up at once.
[WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? THAT ANI "VOICES OF A DISTANT STAR" FROM THE PV JUST NOW… DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON?]
[THAT GIANT ROBOT WAS INSANE! WHO'S THE GENIUS DIRECTOR BEHIND THIS?]
[MY GOD, THAT "CIRCUS" CARA WORK… YOU CAN STORYBOARD LIKE THAT???]
[WHO IS SORA KAMAKAWA? ANYONE KNOW? THE DIRECTOR IS A MONSTER!]
[WHO DID THE KEY FRAS FOR THIS?]
[PLEASE TELL THIS ISN'T ANOTHER PV SCAM. AMAZING PV, TERRIBLE EPISODE.]
[I WAS SAD THAT "CHARLENE" ENDED. NOW I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT "VOICES."]
[A SHORT? ONLY ONE EPISODE?]
[PROBABLY AN OVA-TYPE TEST. IF THE RESPONSE IS GOOD, MAYBE IT BECOS A FULL SEASONAL SERIES.]
It was basically a flood.
Taiki was almost dizzy - but with it ca a fierce sense of agreent. It wasn't just him. A lot of people had been hooked the exact sa way.
For Charlene's fans, that PV left a deep imprint.
Even people who hadn't cared about Voices at all before… were now marking next week in their heads, ready to watch.
…
Inside Yu Animation, the atmosphere was different, but the stare was the sa.
The staff remained in front of the TV, as if trying to read the future inside that screen.
Haruto's eyes were red - many of those cuts had passed through his hands.
Sumire looked slightly dazed, but her breathing was clearly faster than usual, like her body had reacted before her mind could catch up.
And Sora… even after the PV ended, his heart was still beating hard.
Ren was the one who broke the silence, voicing a doubt that felt too heavy to keep bottled up.
"But… weren't we kind of… not exactly fair? We sold the PV like it was a hot-blooded battle ani, full-on hype and adrenaline… but the actual story of Voices of a Distant Star…"
"Why worry about that now?" Sora let out a low laugh. "That's next week's problem."
And deep down, he knew it: if the audience went in expecting an action show and ca out crushed by sothing darker… that might be exactly where the emotions would truly explode.
As long as no one snapped so hard it turned into chaos, everything would be fine.
He gave the group one last look and spoke with the steadiness of soone holding an entire team on a tightrope.
"That's enough for today. Go ho and sleep properly. The ani still isn't a hundred percent done - the long final battle shot, the coloring and photography on so of the everyday cuts, the audio-image compositing… there's still a mountain of work piled up."
"Tonight was just the PV."
"Next week… is the real episode."
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