Toward the "god of anime" - it was a phrase Sora repeated in silence, half as a joke, half as stubbornness. In a room like that, though, there was no divinity at all. Only microphones, paper, a dry throat… and the courage it took to expose yourself for ninety seconds.
"Then fight me," Shirasaki Aoi let the line fall lightly, like a lazy provocation. "If you win… I'll buy you food."
She paused - short, almost invisible if you weren't paying attention.
It was the exact point where, on the page, the youkai was supposed to answer.
And that was where her acting proved its worth.
Aoi didn't rush to "fill" the silence. She respected the gap as if someone were standing in front of her, listening - and only then did she return to the mic, with a different timbre: cleaner, sharper, harder in just the right measure.
"That's right… I can see you."
Another micro-pause, like a smile that never reached her face but lived in her voice.
"And I'm not afraid. Not even a little."
…
When the ninety seconds ended, the room hung for a moment, as if no one wanted to be the first to break the air. Sora only started breathing properly after the door closed.
Without hesitation, he took Aoi's résumé and placed it on the pre-approved stack.
Yumi was still a little stunned, blinking like she was trying to fit the pieces together.
"Seiyuu have this kind of… natural deception, don't they?" she let out, almost laughing from nerves. "They open their mouth and turn into someone else."
Up to that point, most of the tests had been for the protagonist, Natsume. Male voices orbiting the same axis: subdued, gentle, never overplayed - an approach that had to feel "real" without losing warmth.
But Reiko was a different story.
Aoi, exactly as Sora asked, switched registers three times during the read. Three versions of the same soul, like she was testing which one could hurt the most. If Yumi hadn't kept her eyes glued to Aoi the entire time, she would've sworn it was three different people speaking.
Sumire, beside them, added it naturally - she knew the industry too well to be impressed without reason.
"She's not just anyone. In the winter cour, the highest-rated late-night show on our regional affiliate had its heroine voiced by her." Sumire tilted her head, as if recalling an uncomfortable detail. "It's funny to think about… only a few months ago, Voices of a Distant Star aired as a last-minute substitute in that very slot. And now the lead voice from that hit is here, hunting for her next chance."
Sora heard it and, inside, arrived at a dry conclusion: the Japanese industry was cruel… but it was mature.
It chewed people up - and at the same time, it forged professionals at a frightening level. There wasn't that "empty voice" feeling he remembered from certain productions, where they cast people who couldn't act just to fill the role, and a good scene turned into secondhand embarrassment in seconds. Even the faint memory of some awful voice work he'd heard in another life still made the back of his neck prickle.
But here, in this Tokushima studio, there was no room for nostalgia. Only decisions.
The truly important roles would only be finalized later, in the last round of discussion. The smaller parts - one-off voices, episode youkai, background characters - Sora could lock in by himself without turning it into an assembly.
And even so, when they finally looked up, it was already six in the evening.
From morning to the end of the workday, the three of them listened to audition after audition, without a break. They left the last read with heavy heads, like their brains were swimming in voices.
Still, no one stood to leave.
While the impressions were still fresh - while they could still recall timbre, intention, rhythm, breath - they stayed in the room and argued it out.
"For Natsume, I thought the guy from that agency was excellent," Sumire said, checking her notes. "His performance was clean."
Sora didn't even let the sentence settle.
"No. His voice is too mature. It lacks that 'boyish' air. And he's already older… what if he retires in a few years?"
Sumire frowned.
"Then Nishikawa Shū?"
"That one, yes." Sora answered without hesitation. "Especially because he's still young."
"And what does age have to do with it?" Sumire asked, a faint edge in her voice.
Sora rested his pen on the paper, thinking for a second before he spoke.
"What if Natsume Yuujinchou blows up and we need a second season?"
He didn't say what he was really carrying in his head: that, in the other timeline - the memory that stubbornly existed inside him - Natsume had survived years, seasons, entire cycles without losing its soul. If there was any work that felt like a "long road," it was this one.
"If we choose someone who can grow and stay in the industry for a long time, we save ourselves trouble later," he concluded.
And at this stage of production, he didn't want trouble. He wanted precision.
…
After a bit more back-and-forth, Sora finally brought up what everyone had been holding back.
"Reiko. Taking Kashiwagi out… I think the choice is between Shirasaki Aoi and Mizuno Mei. Those two are still echoing in my head."
Sumire thought for a moment - not indecisive, but like someone comparing different tools.
"Shirasaki. Her range is much richer. When we get to actual recording, she'll be able to adjust to our directing style without us having to wrench it out of her."
Sora nodded.
"Agreed."
Yumi straightened quickly in her chair.
"Same."
And just like that, one of the emotional pillars of the anime slid into place.
…
Then came the real problem.
Nyanko-sensei.
Sora stared at the pages as if they might offer an answer on their own, and they didn't.
Nyanko-sensei's tone in the reference material was a rare mix: laziness with irreverence, the kind of voice that made you laugh before the joke even existed. It wasn't just funny - it was naturally funny. And that was almost impossible to imitate without slipping into caricature.
Out of the ten candidates who read for the role, only one came close in any real way: a twenty-two-year-old newcomer, freshly graduated, named Sakurai Kazuma.
He'd hit about six - maybe seven - tenths of the spirit.
But he froze three times.
Three.
Pure nerves. And in practice that meant delays, retakes, risk.
Even so, Sora lifted his eyes and made the choice like someone picking the lesser poison.
"I'm going with Sakurai."
Yumi didn't blink.
"No objections."
Sumire, however, tightened her expression.
"He's a rookie. Aren't you afraid his quality will wobble and throw off the schedule?"
Sora let the air out slowly.
"The others don't come anywhere near the tone I picture for Nyanko-sensei. The gap is too big."
And that triggered another round of discussion - no shouting, but dense.
The script was his, yes. But Sumire, as the one responsible for scene direction and the rhythm of performance on screen, also had legitimate ideas about every character. Sora listened. Adjusted. Gave ground when it made sense.
But Nyanko-sensei was a special case.
That cat's personality was so distinctive that if they missed here, the work would lose a piece of its charm before episode one even finished.
And deep down, Sora also knew something else: he was using the original as a foundation, but that didn't mean copying everything like a mirror.
If someone better appeared - even if they differed from the reference - he would choose the better fit. No guilt.
Yumi realized that early and, as an investor, didn't try to yank on the reins. She knew her place: writing the check was easy; trying to "boss around" what she didn't understand was the fastest way to sabotage things. Knowing that, she didn't force importance where she didn't belong.
Still… ending the meeting like that felt strange. Like she was just saying "amen" to everything.
And because of that, she asked - honestly, almost insecurely:
"If I'm the investor and I agree with everything… doesn't that mean I'm not supervising you at all? What if, in the end, I'm helping you make mistakes and ruining the work?"
Sumire answered immediately, serious.
"No. Actually, it's the opposite."
She rested her fingers on her notepad, as if organizing what she could and couldn't say out loud.
"I've attended a lot of voice audition meetings… including with the former president and director, Hiroshi Kamakawa. And in practice, most productions have a committee with seven, eight investors."
Sumire took a breath, choosing her words.
"When there are too many investors, interests become a web. And then the worst starts: people with no ability try to 'make it work.' Weak seiyuu reach out to investors on the side, build closeness, ask for favors… and then the investor pressures the studio to push them into a role. Sometimes they aren't even seiyuu - just an outsider, a celebrity, an acquaintance, someone without training… and they show up here as if it's an order. The result? The anime airs and the fans tear it apart."
She left the rest hanging, not naming what everyone understood anyway.
She glanced sideways at Sora with a worry that didn't belong to the official agenda. She knew that after today, he'd get messages and calls of every kind - some too "polite," others brazenly opportunistic.
She hoped he'd endure it, like his father always had.
"That's why, Yumi," Sumire concluded, looking straight at the investor, "the way you're acting… you're the ideal partner for a studio."
Yumi blinked, a little lost.
"Am I…?"
Before she could process it, Sora checked the clock.
Nine p.m.
He gave a short, tired laugh.
"Alright. Settled. Let's eat."
Yumi smiled immediately, like her whole body had remembered there was still a life outside scripts and microphones.
"Speaking of that… I've been investing in this anime for almost two months and I still haven't eaten with you two even once. Any good places you'd recommend?"
Sumire was about to answer with the calm of someone who already had a destination picked out.
"I know a ramen shop - I used to go all the time back in college…"
"No, no, no." Sora cut her off too quickly, almost desperate.
He'd gone with Sumire to that same shop so many times he knew the sound of the pot by heart. It was good, sure - but "good" didn't mean "all the time." And besides, no matter how modest the team was, Yumi was still the project's biggest investor. Their first meal together couldn't be a random ramen place, like a student meetup.
Sora pulled the responsibility to himself without ceremony, in the natural tone of someone who, at the end of the day, was the studio president.
"I know a seafood place here in Tokushima. Let's go there."
…
Over the next few days, Sumire was proven right.
Sora received calls. Messages. Approaches that smelled like desperation and opportunism.
Low-skill seiyuu - or people with "shortcuts" in their heads - trying to secure a role in Natsume Yuujinchou through the back door, implying favors, applying pressure with fake politeness, as if the word "investor" could open any lock.
Sora had no patience.
Instead of listening, he cut them off. And when they insisted, he blew up - not with childish screaming, but with a scolding so blunt and so cold it made the other side feel ashamed through the phone.
Because it was dirty.
It was spitting in the face of the people who'd spent an entire day waiting for a measly two-minute audition slot, trembling in the hallway chair, trying to earn their chance.
Once the voice cast was decided, the next step came fast: turning decisions into a schedule.
The recording timeline needed to be born alongside the rhythm of production.
And when July entered its final stretch, Natsume Yuujinchou finally dropped onto the tracks for real.
The genga for episode one were close to completion. Episode two had already begun key animation. Art backgrounds started coming in, set design found its consistency, the sound-effects team moved in parallel, and the in-betweeners were pulled in one by one as the pipeline filled.
At the same time, Sora still had to carve out time - time he didn't have - to reconstruct, properly, those classic pieces the audience would recognize with their hearts before they recognized with memory: the theme, variations, insert songs.
With the studio and subcontractors combined, more than a hundred people were involved. And when that many people enter "production mode," the air temperature changes: it turns electric, days get shorter, and exhaustion becomes the common language.
In the middle of it all, Sora, as director, was the most pressured axis.
He didn't need to put his hands on every step - but he had to see them all. Guide what each department should deliver, decide the project's "tone," keep the work with the same soul from start to finish… and give the final approval on the completed product.
When more than ten processes run at once, stacked on top of each other, your head starts failing at basic things. There were days Sora caught himself staring at a page and thinking, for a second, whether he was the one who had chosen this life.
Leaving the studio at ten p.m. already counted as luck.
And at that pace, time didn't walk - it fell.
July passed as if someone had forcefully turned the page.
And August… arrived.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
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