There was a kind of anger that didn't arrive as a shout.
It arrived as fever.
Yumi was in her own office, camera rolling, recording yet another rant video - this time tearing into episode nine of the season's most popular anime, The Mage's Wrath, which had just shoved in a twist so disgusting it felt like it was written purely to provoke the audience. She was in the zone, ready to unload, when - out of sheer boredom - she scrolled her phone and ran straight into Sora's reply to Maki.
Six words.
Short. Clean.
And packed with a kind of mockery that slapped like an open palm.
Yumi's delicate face froze for a beat, as if her brain needed to confirm she'd read it correctly. Then she doubled over in her chair and burst into loud, shameless laughter.
"I'm going to die…" she wheezed, unable to catch her breath. "So Sora's that kind of person? I really thought he was just that polite kid, all 'calm and gentle.' Yeah, no… he's poisonous. The type who smiles while he slides the blade in."
Whether investing in Natsume Yuujinchou would actually turn a profit was still an equation for the future. But the truth was, her "investor day-to-day" inside Yume Animation in Tokushima was already more entertaining than anything she used to do back when she lived in the heart of the noise in Tokyo.
And now, with Sora showing this side of himself… it was even better.
…
When Maki saw the comment, his blood pressure spiked so hard it felt physical.
Online fights weren't about who had the sharpest insult - it was about who lost control first. Who cracked their mask. Who let the blood show. And after days of this fermenting, after waking up in the middle of the night grinding his teeth with hate, Sora had replied… with only those six words.
It wasn't a response.
It was leaving him talking to himself.
It was making him look like a clown in front of everyone.
Maki snapped. In one harsh motion, he lifted his laptop and hurled it into the wall. The impact made an ugly crack, the sound echoing through the office like a slap.
His face darkened - not with embarrassment, but with contained fury.
He stood there for several minutes, breathing, forcing his head to cool down. When he finally spoke, it was low, as if he were swearing an oath to himself.
"In the end… we settle this with the work." His mouth twisted into a cold smile. "Enjoy yourself for a few more days. In three months, when The Dragon King Next Door premieres nationwide… we'll see. When I'm being invited onto TV programs across every affiliate station, I'll grind you up live, Sora. And you too, Yumi… and that assistant director who keeps playing mute, Sumire. You're all in the same pack."
…
But Maki's temporary silence didn't mean the people who lived to watch chaos were going to go home and sleep.
Online, the "war" kept going.
Fans of Voices of a Distant Star linked up with Yumi's followers. On the other side, Maki's supporters - and, more importantly, the rabid readers of Natsuyuki, the scriptwriter of The Dragon King Next Door - held the line like they were defending territory.
And the main fuel was that one sentence.
"So mad… did you get impatient?"
It became a meme. A default reply. A ready-made provocation.
"HAHAHA! Maki got impatient. Did Natsuyuki get impatient too?"
"Natsuyuki fans… you scared of losing? Getting nervous?"
"Don't get cocky, Yumi's little lapdogs. With that cheap anime that can't even hit two hundred million yen, you think you can compete with Natsuyuki-sensei's work? Even if it's just ratings in Shikoku, stop dreaming."
"Oh? Impatient?"
"Natsuyuki fans really are impatient."
"Impatient is your whole family!"
"I'm counting the days until October so I can watch the Dragon King get crushed."
"Dream on. If The Dragon King Next Door loses to Natsume Yuujinchou in Shikoku - even if it's in just one prefecture - I'll cut my head off and kick it around like a ball."
That was the level it dropped to.
Sumire pulled her eyes away from the forum on her phone and returned to reality as if stepping out of filthy noise. The threads were still moving, the provocations still popping, but none of it was allowed to seep into the work. And in that office, Sora was right there - leaning over the desk, drawing storyboards with near-silent focus. The clean outline of his profile, the steady gaze - like the entire world could scream outside the door and still never touch him.
Sumire found it… comforting.
If it were her - being mocked by a senior in the industry - she would have swallowed it down. Not out of cowardice, but because she couldn't bring herself to expose her face like that. She'd never put herself in an online ring, answering to crowds.
Sora was different.
He didn't seek this kind of thing. But when the tide came, he knew how to hit back - and more importantly, he didn't let any of it contaminate the quality of what he delivered.
She glanced at her own board: the storyboard for episode three of Natsume Yuujinchou was already well underway. In two more days, episodes one and two - drawn by Sora - and episode three - drawn by her - would be basically finished. The week after that, they would have to start on four and five.
And along with that… the accumulation would begin.
Layouts for the first three episodes would start at the same time. Before the end of June, key animation production for episodes one and two would have to roll forward. The art department would begin background work. And in early July, the studio would need to organize voice auditions: dozens of characters, from main roles to bit parts, demanding fast decisions - good ones.
After that, it would repeat. A cycle that renewed every week until the anime premiered… and finished airing.
Most likely…
A trip through hell.
And yet, Sumire let a small smile slip.
She'd spent years on productions that felt like they existed only to fill a broadcast slot - no soul, no risk, nothing worth remembering. Here, with Sora, it was different. Voices of a Distant Star had been hard… but it had been alive. And now, with Natsume Yuujinchou, she felt the same thing: exhaustion, yes - but also joy.
Because when you believe in what you're making, even fatigue changes its flavor.
…
The biggest difference between a short work like Voices of a Distant Star and a full cour series was brutal: in a short, the work comes in a straight line. Storyboard first, then layout, key animation, backgrounds, in-betweens, coloring, compositing, sound - one step after another, like climbing stairs.
In a series, it doesn't work like that.
In a series, everything stacks.
You finish the storyboard for episode one and before you can breathe, you're halfway through two - and suddenly episode four needs to begin. While key animation for episode one moves forward, you still have to approve the background style for episode one, review layouts for episode two, adjust designs for episode three… and when production hits around episode five or six, the chaos becomes law: compositing episode one, coloring episode two, recording voice, checking key frames for episode three, producing key for episode four - all at once.
That's why so many series "collapse" in the middle, only to recover their footing in the final episodes: the peak workload usually hits right when the studio has more active fronts than it should.
On June 23rd, all character designs were finally completed.
Haruto, as chief animation director, had put his hands into a huge portion of it. Corrections on top of corrections - tiny adjustments to proportion, expression, mouth line, the weight of the eyes - details no one notices when they're right, but that scream when they're wrong.
Sora performed the final inspection: design checks, palette checks, consistency checks. When he finished, he nodded, satisfied.
He had no intention of copying anything panel-for-panel from the material he'd studied in his previous life. His version, produced in the Japan of the present, needed to be his. And if there were things that had always bothered him - aged image quality, action without impact, youkai entrances lacking the pressure they should carry - then he would reinforce them properly.
The main character design style would stay faithful to the spirit of the original, but some details would inevitably change. School uniforms, for example, would be adjusted toward a style more common in the region. Architecture too would receive subtle edits, grounded in the local atmosphere - Tokushima, Shikoku, the real texture of the city they lived in.
Overall, looking at that thick stack of sheets, Sora was satisfied.
Nothing pulled him out of immersion. Nothing felt fake.
Haruto rubbed a hand through his hair, like he could already feel the weight of the coming months settling onto his shoulders.
"Kid… now you're really going to have to sweat."
He had decades of production in his bones. He knew a weekly series "hell" wasn't a metaphor - it was routine. And Sora was still young, still new in the role - the kind of person whose speed could decide the fate of the entire schedule.
If the director fell two or three days behind on a critical task, the finished product could slip a full week. Sometimes more.
Haruto was giving him a warning. A preventive shove.
Sora smiled.
"Don't worry, Haruto. You know the goal I set for this show."
Haruto went silent for a few seconds.
That goal - after the fight with Maki - was no longer a secret. The whole studio knew. Even the outsourced teams were already talking about it, half like a joke, half like pressure. And Tokushima's affiliate station had called twice "to understand the situation better," praising the young director's "marketing sense" like he was some kind of promotional genius.
"First place in Shikoku ratings…" Haruto murmured, not sure whether to laugh or sigh.
Then he drew in a deep breath and said it, almost moved - like he was allowing himself to believe, just for a moment.
"If you really pull that off… then my twenty years as an animator will have been worth it."
Because the frustration of working on empty projects wasn't Sumire's burden alone. Haruto carried the same feeling: decades of "fast-food" productions, made to fill slots, forgettable the moment they ended.
Voices of a Distant Star had been an exception. He'd been proud of it. And now, with Natsume Yuujinchou, he wanted to believe again.
Sora lifted the character design sheets like an improvised trophy and gave them a light shake, confident.
"Leave it to us. We're taking first place."
And he walked out of the room as if he'd said something simple - while carrying, inside himself, the weight of a promise.
…
Under the collective effort of Yume Animation, June slipped away almost without a sound.
And across Japan, the works scheduled to air in the autumn cour began releasing materials: designs, cast lists, teasers, production details. One by one, titles filled conversations - and inevitably, Natsume Yuujinchou joined that wave.
On July 2nd, the verified official account on Natsuyume dropped a flood of updates all at once.
After a full month of fandom warfare between Natsume Yuujinchou and The Dragon King Next Door, there was finally concrete information about that "youkai slice-of-life anime" coming out of Tokushima.
Within hours, the forum was packed.
People rushing in to look.
People wanting to understand.
Because in the end…
What kind of work was this, exactly - one that could give an eighteen-year-old director such outrageous confidence?
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