The insult war between Sora Kamakawa and Maki had been dead for almost two months now. Online, the uproar stirred up by Yumi 's fans and the fans of screenwriter Natsuyuki the mind behind The Dragon King Next Door - was fading, too.
In the end, everyone has too much to do. Too much ani to keep up with, too many light novels to read, too many manga chapters to catch. Anger lasts a few days, produces a handful of screenshots, turns into a … and then disappears, swallowed by a tiline that never stops moving.
And when Tokyo's four major broadcasters began pushing their October cour flagships, the entire market conversation snapped into alignnt like a magnet: discussion of the season's new shows started revolving almost entirely around those four projects. Promotion everywhere - staff popping up on variety programs, teasers in pri ti, billboards in otaku districts, magazines screaming "AUTUMN SPECIAL" on their covers.
Voices of a Distant Star still had a loyal following - and not a small one - but in practice only a slice of that crowd kept staring at Kantoku Sora's "second work" with the sa hunger. And if Yumi hadn't pulled those maneuvers months earlier - dragging attention with controversy, forcing the na Natsu Yuujinchou into the mouths of both the wrong people and the right ones - maybe the promotional PV wouldn't have beco a big topic at all.
But it did.
The trailer upload got shoved upward by onlookers, haters, and fans like it was a contest, and it ended up cracking the top ten trending topics on the NatsuYu forum - proof, in itself, that the ani had stopped being "just another local project" and had beco a target.
The PV was straightforward, almost restrained. It didn't try to promise a brawl, didn't try to sell a spectacle the work simply wasn't. It showed what mattered for a first impression: atmosphere.
A clean palette. Air in the shots. A calm rhythm that didn't ask permission. The trailer introduced the core faces: Takashi Natsu, gentle and quiet; Nyanko-sensei, impossible to ignore even in a few seconds; the couple who took Natsu in, with that everyday kindness that never announces itself; and a handful of classmates - just enough to give the audience a "normal" floor before the supernatural steps in.
Then the editing flickered - as if the video itself knew that revealing too much would be betrayal - and let fragnts of the youkai from the early episodes slip through. Eyes. Silhouettes. Mask details, horns, fur, scarred skin… beauty and threat inside the sa fra.
The sharper viewers could even catch nas through context, or through material circulating outside the PV: Madara, Hishigaki, Tsuyukami, Houzuki…
But on-screen, the PV never displayed nas.
On purpose.
In Natsu Yuujinchou, a na isn't a detail. It's weight. It's fate.
The trailer's final cut drove that ho without explaining anything: Natsu tearing a page from an old notebook, bringing the paper to his mouth, pressing his hands together in a firm gesture, and exhaling hard. Dark ink "leapt" off the page - living strokes slicing through the air - as if those words had bodies… as if returning a na was, quite literally, setting sothing free.
That's what an ani PV is for: a fast asuring stick. Look at the linework, feel the quality, sense the intention. Then decide whether it's worth giving it a week or two.
And for most people, the trailer fit their tastes.
"So this is the Natsu Yuujinchou they've been screaming about on NatsuYu for months? It actually looks… pretty good."
"Does anyone know the title of that track in the PV? It's gorgeous."
"From the trailer, it doesn't feel like a fighting show. It really is youkai slice-of-life."
"The official site says it's about returning nas to youkai. I'm curious - how do you even animate a story like that?"
"I'm kind of interested, but I don't live within Tokushima TV's signal area. I can't follow it on TV. If the quality really is good and its premiere score on NatsuYu is high, I'll probably buy the BD when it cos out in November."
"I'm hoping Kantoku Sora can hit at least seventy percent of Voices of a Distant Star's level. If he can do that, I honestly think Natsu Yuujinchou could top ratings within Shikoku this autumn."
"Don't get carried away. Most likely all that talk was just marketing to pull traffic. You're setting your expectations too high. Look at how strong the shows the four Tokyo networks are pushing this season are."
"But if Natsu Yuujinchou actually performs well after it airs… it doesn't have to match Voices' winter-cour result of ranking fifth in average BD sales per volu. If it can squeeze into the top fifteen per-volu BD sales this autumn, then at the Tokyo Animation Festival at the end of December… Kantoku Sora might genuinely have a shot at this year's Best New Director award."
"Top fifteen? To do that you'd need over 45,000 per volu, wouldn't you? Voices was a single-volu release, and Yumi was blasting ads for it back then, with a bunch of industry nas praising it on TV. Natsu is a thirteen-episode cour series - at minimum it'll have five or six BD volus. There's no way it can 'sneak' to a 45,000-per-volu average. Tokushima TV doesn't have that kind of reach."
"But NatsuYu does. Half a year ago, Voices opened with a high score on NatsuYu and overnight shot to number one among that season's 170 premieres. That's how it gradually broke out, and the BD ended up exploding nationwide. If Natsu Yuujinchou also premieres and climbs to #1 in NatsuYu ratings… replicating Voices' trajectory from six months ago, then anything's possible."
"Voices had over a million ratings and still sat at 9.4. If that kid can direct just any ani and get NatsuYu's picky veteran fans to score him that high, then fine - just call him the god of animation already. Who would even argue? Competing for 'Best New Director' would be a joke."
"If I rember right, among locally aired TV ani this year - excluding Voices - the highest per-volu sales was Magic Swordswoman Charllene, which aired on Tokushima TV in January. And that was only 34,000 per volu. Natsu is also airing on a local station… even if it barely surpasses Charllene, it's still nowhere near 45,000. Stop fantasizing."
"Trash. Of course it's trash. I listened to Aya's fans hype Natsu Yuujinchou for two months like it was a revolution… then I watch the PV and I can already tell it's going to bomb."
"And I watched The Dragon King Next Door PV and thought it was going to bomb too. Natsuyuki's fans are going to watch their idol's new work turn into a joke in the fandom."
Under the official account's comnts, it turned into both a ring and a public square. Aya's fans snapping at any criticism like it was personal insult. Natsuyuki's fans defending their author like a flag. Old Voices of a Distant Star fans demanding high standards. And the onlookers - the ones who just wanted to see the circus catch fire - watching with open enjoynt.
But beneath the noise, sothing real was happening.
As the PV spread, Natsu Yuujinchou started to take root in people's minds - both inside NatsuYu's massive bubble and among the fans living within Tokushima TV's regional reach. The kind of anticipation that doesn't appear out of nowhere, but piles up like snow: first curiosity, then a wager, then the feeling of, Okay. I need to watch the premiere.
By Aya's plan, the goal had already been achieved. The chaos from months ago and the fight with Makiweren't accidents - they were fuel. She didn't want the premiere to slide by unnoticed. She wanted Episode 1 to be born under hard light.
And it was.
Maki, anwhile, had a different problem: even when he tried to avoid it, he kept getting dragged into Sora's orbit. Before October arrived, he accepted interviews with several animation dia outlets in the Tokyo area - and entertainnt reporters never miss a chance to poke what generates clicks.
They didn't want safe answers. They wanted the embarrassing cut. The instant a face changes. The line that becos a headline.
And in almost every interview, soone shoved the sa question into his lap: the feud with the Kantoku of Natsu Yuujinchou.
Makiheard it so many tis he started getting genuinely irritated.
What kind of comparison was that?
He was him. Sora was a kid.
And what stung the most wasn't the question itself - it was noticing that, sotis, the journalists seed more interested in Sora's "big talk" than in the ani Makiwas about to launch as his own flagship.
It burned.
In one more interview, when the question ca up again, Makilet out a long sigh, stood up, and simply turned his back. He walked off the set without saying another word - no argunt, no performance. He wasn't going to offer Sora and Sora's ani another crumb of attention. He wasn't going to beco a step for the other guy to climb.
But gossip doesn't respect people who try to be rational.
That sa day, a site ran a headline with that filthy "maybe" tone that condemns before it proves anything:
"The Dragon King Next Door director Maki's expression shifts after hearing the na of Natsu Yuujinchou's director and he hurriedly leaves the interview - could this be the clearest sign yet that Makifears Tokushima's teenage genius?"
That night, Makiopened NatsuYu's main page and saw the article featured.
And he saw the comnts.
Thousands of them.
People laughing. Inventing narratives. Calling it a "run." Putting words in his mouth. Turning a refusal into fear - like he'd walked out trembling, when all he'd done was refuse to play their ga.
Anger rose, hot and sharp.
For a mont, the urge was primitive - go after the person who wrote it and make them swallow every line. The thought cut through his mind with violence, the way it only does when you feel like you're being used as a public joke.
In the end, he just clenched his jaw, slamd the screen shut, and stood there breathing hard.
All for a few clicks.
And even so… it was hard not to feel like the whole world was trying to turn Sora Kamakawa into a story bigger than the entire season.
In a luxury apartnt complex in Tokyo, Natsuyuki Shirasawa - screenwriter of The Dragon King Next Door and one of the best-known nas in light novels - closed her laptop and stretched back in her chair with the calm of soone used to being watched.
Flashes of Natsu Yuujinchou's PV still drifted through her mind.
She smiled faintly, almost amused, like soone who'd just witnessed a well-played move.
"As I thought… you can't really tell what kind of 'flavor' his ani has from a PV alone."
Her gaze slid to the shelf beside her desk. On the second row, the BD of Voices of a Distant Star sat there like an inconvenient - and useful - reminder.
She knew about the fan wars. Of course she did. When a fandom explodes, the echo reaches the authors, the backstage, everyone with a na in the industry.
But unlike Maki- that walking ego who only understood hierarchy - Natsuyuki took Sora seriously.
Talent as a director was one thing, and the whole market was already obsessed with labeling Sora a "prodigy." But Natsuyuki saw another layer, maybe a more dangerous one: the ability to create story. She lived with a foot in both worlds herself - ani scripting and light-novel writing - and she recognized when soone had a feel for rhythm, scenes, subtext, emotional construction.
That was why she didn't believe Natsu Yuujinchou would be so generic product, the kind that appears and vanishes with the cour.
But she also didn't believe she'd lose.
Even if, for many people, the "real" battlefield was local - inside Tokushima TV's regional reach, covering Shikoku's four prefectures…
The Dragon King Next Door might take hits from the other three Tokyo networks' headline titles, backed by heavy money and aggressive campaigns.
But losing to Natsu Yuujinchou?
To her, that simply didn't make sense.
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