After the key animation is finished, the usual pipeline moves into in-betweens, then coloring, and finally importing everything into the software so the scenes can start "moving" in a rough form. That's the first moment the whole production team can get a real sense of what the anime is becoming - how smooth the motion feels, whether the timing lands, and how sound might sit against the image. Even at this stage, you can already spot hints of what works and what doesn't.
But with Voices of a Distant Star, things weren't nearly that comfortable.
Hundreds of cuts had been planned, supported by thousands of key drawings, and most of those keyframes were essentially done. Some in-between work had been completed, but the coloring was still crawling forward - barely a sixth of what they needed. And the voice recording… it wasn't even finished yet.
Strictly speaking, it was too early for a preview screening.
And the result was almost guaranteed to look rough.
Only Sora Kamakawa didn't have the luxury of waiting.
He was carrying too much at once: deadlines, subcontractors, partner studios running nonstop, deliveries coming in at odd hours… and above all, the pressure of being a first-time director. The kind of pressure that gnaws from the inside, the fear that something overlooked at the start could become a disaster no one can fix later. If he could watch a crude draft one day sooner and catch problems now, there might still be time to squeeze out a correction.
That was the hope.
Besides, he'd structured the schedule so the most critical cuts were prioritized. If those held up, the preview would still be worth something - at least enough to measure the anime's heartbeat.
So Sora had everyone gather whatever they could and set the first screening for the afternoon of March 5th, in the company's photography room, right there in Tokushima, Shikoku.
When the day arrived, the mood inside the studio turned strange. Nobody spoke too loudly. Nobody could pretend it was "just another meeting." There was tension… and also a childish kind of excitement, as if they were about to open a sealed box and finally see what had been forming inside for two months.
The script for Voices of a Distant Star had hit hard from the start. When Sora distributed copies, two of the key animators had read it with reddened eyes. And even though Sora wasn't the fastest - still learning processes veterans handled on instinct - the quality hadn't suffered. That was his way of working: maybe slower to reproduce the "correct" studio rhythm, but obsessive about precision, and uncompromising about the level the story demanded.
From the outside, the reputation was simple: average efficiency, high talent. A new director, but dangerous.
In the improvised screening room, the handful of employees still in the building - just over a dozen - had already gathered. And before Sora and the assistant director, Sumire, arrived, a quiet discussion started, careful and half-superstitious, like speaking too loudly might invite bad luck.
"Isn't this… too barebones?" Hina, the photography supervisor, murmured with a cup of coffee in hand. "No inserted music, no post-dub work, the recordings aren't even done, barely any painted cuts… does a preview like this even mean anything?"
"The director said we're making an exception because of the schedule," the painting supervisor replied, blunt and pragmatic. "If we wait until everything is done to do a preview, it'll be airing by the time we notice anything. And if something's truly wrong, we won't even have room to patch it."
One of the key animators spoke carefully, choosing her words.
"I don't think he's doing this to judge effects, paint, or final audio… everyone knows those aren't finished. If he scheduled it the day after the keyframes were wrapped… he probably wants to see the drawings. The overall feel. How the cuts hold up when they become a sequence."
"Drawings…?" Haruto, the chief animation director, asked, with the posture of someone who'd seen entire productions collapse over tiny cracks. "What kind of problems would even show up there?"
She gave a small, awkward smile.
"All the keyframes go through the director and Sumire before they reach you. If they say it's fine, then it comes to you for review and corrections. So if he wanted to watch it now… maybe he needs to be sure that 'fine' stays fine when everything moves together."
Ren, standing off to the side, listened to the end and closed the conversation with calm restraint.
"We just follow the director's instructions."
Before long, the photography team finished calibrating the equipment and importing the assembled data. Soon after, the door opened and Sora walked in with Sumire.
He greeted everyone one by one with almost rigid politeness - as if the formal habit was also how he held himself together. But behind the controlled smile was what he didn't say: this screening was, yes, a test… and also a quiet confession of insecurity.
Because that was exactly it. Sora wanted to see the overall quality of their drawings at once.
Watching the keyframes cut by cut in isolation, he hadn't found anything glaring. But putting hundreds of cuts together, in motion, was a different story. The perception changed. The weight of flaws changed. What felt acceptable alone could turn into an unbearable noise when chained into a sequence.
If nothing appeared, that was best.
If something did… there were still a little over twenty days until broadcast. It was tight, but it wasn't zero.
Sumire looked tense too, her gaze too sharp, as if her body understood before her mind did: the fate of the project could be sensed here, in this first crude screening in a small room in Tokushima.
Sora didn't waste time.
"Alright… it's time to see what the last two months of work have produced."
He pulled out his phone, then pressed play on the equipment.
Silence fell all at once.
Every pair of eyes locked onto the screen.
The image appeared: a short-haired girl. Alone on an empty train, her face angled down, holding a phone like it was her last bridge to the world. Her eyes carried a loneliness that needed no explanation - except what they were seeing was black-and-white, uncolored, undubbed - just key drawings moving in the roughest possible way.
The good news: the picture moved.
The bad news: that was all. Only the picture moved.
And yet, when the voice finally came in, the room shifted.
"There is a word… called 'world'…"
Rinka's voice actress had a soft tone with a firm edge, as if the character was trying not to fall apart while speaking. It was enough for Sora to feel his body snap into the anime's rhythm - as if, for a few minutes, he stopped being the director and became an audience member.
The girl murmured into her phone, questioning the world, questioning herself… until, in a nearly invisible beat, she returned from a daydream. And then came the blow: she wasn't on that blue planet anymore.
That particular cut was fully colored.
The background compositing had been done too.
And the moment the screen bloomed into color, everyone's breathing hitched, like they'd been yanked out of a sketch and thrown into a real film.
The girl - small, fragile - was encased in a black mecha. The camera pulled back, revealing the absolute void of space, and far beyond… Earth. Blue, enormous, too beautiful to feel real. The contrast was cruel: her tiny figure adrift in nothingness against that massive, distant planet. And the sadness, which had been only an idea before, now lived in the style itself - in the palette, in the way the emptiness seemed to have a sound.
"I… am no longer in that world."
She said it with a calm that hurt, because it wasn't drama.
It was acceptance.
And then music began.
Hina blinked, confused for a second - there wasn't supposed to be music yet. They hadn't inserted any tracks.
She turned and saw it: Sora was playing a song from his phone.
A demo track. A rough piece he'd put together with the music team in a recording studio just the day before. Not the final mix, not perfectly cut… but it filled the space with such precision it felt like it had always belonged there.
Sora kept switching between variations on his phone, matching the tone as the scenes advanced. And the preview - unfinished as it was - started to feel strangely alive.
Sumire, watching the screen, noticed something else while she kept an eye on his movements.
The music he was composing fit this anime too well.
It wasn't just "good."
It was compatible. Like it had been born from the same wound.
On Earth, the memories unfolded: the girl's and the boy's inner monologues, their gentle overlap on the walk home after school, their silhouettes on a bicycle under the sunset, hiding from rain outside a convenience store, the sweetness of feelings too young to confidently call love. Their connection wasn't loud - it was subtle, everyday, and that was why it felt painfully real.
And then, when the memory ended, came the scene of her behind him, pointing up at the sky where the mecha waited like an unavoidable fate.
"Hey, Asei… I'm going to… pilot that."
From there, she became part of the joint fleet in space and left the planet behind.
And he… stayed. Just an ordinary boy, trapped in ordinary life - entrance exams, high school, a predictable future.
Even reading the script had made people swallow hard. But watching those drawings take shape - and hearing the voice acting, more emotionally charged than Sora had expected - thickened the suffocating atmosphere, like cold mist slipping into the lungs.
Even Sora found himself held by the screen.
That was when he truly understood what Haruto had once told him: the first time you watch an anime you're making… moving in front of your eyes… it's different from everything else.
It was hard to even breathe properly.
Because no matter how much was still missing - paint, final audio, polish, corrections - at that moment there was something undeniable.
The anime was starting to be born.
And for some reason, it hurt and moved him at the same time, like his chest couldn't decide which feeling to choose.