On paper, the idea was simple. In reality, it was anything but: establish a head office in Tokyo and turn Tokushima into the company's regional branch.
A few days later, when Sora Kamakawa gathered the entire staff to announce the decision, the room was filled with blank stares. No one had expected a move that drastic to happen so soon. Even so, once the initial shock faded and everyone had time to think it through, they could all understand why he had made that choice.
A truly ambitious anime production demanded a standard far too high to rely on outsourcing alone. Quality became unstable, control slipped away too easily, and if he wanted this new project to reach the level he envisioned, then he needed a larger, more dependable structure built under his own oversight. As company president, Sora did not force anyone's hand. He simply gave them two options.
Anyone willing to go to Tokyo could go with him.
Anyone unwilling to leave could remain in Tokushima. In the end, both the head office and the branch would still be working on the same anime. They would just handle different parts of the process while coordinating closely across locations.
Back in the office he now shared with Sumire, Sora got straight to the point.
"What about you? What are you going to do?"
The two of them used the same room because, in practice, their work overlapped constantly. Planning, execution, scheduling, revisions, production discussions - everything flowed back and forth between them. Separating their spaces would only make the work slower.
Sumire did not hesitate.
"I'm going to Tokyo."
The answer came instantly, without even a pause to think. For her, there was no real difference. She had been alone in Tokushima from the beginning, with no family nearby and no ties strong enough to keep her anchored there. Staying or leaving was, at its core, only a matter of changing scenery.
Sora let out a long, quiet breath, as though only then realizing how much tension he had been carrying.
"Thanks."
After working side by side for so long, he knew exactly how important Sumire was to the production. She might not be someone who could help him reinvent a work on a purely creative level, but when it came to execution, she was invaluable. Organization, supervision, schedule management, practical coordination - she carried a tremendous amount of weight. If she had chosen to remain in Tokushima, he would have felt the gap immediately.
As for Yumi Noriko, there was even less reason to worry. She had recently become deeply invested in her role as an anime investor, but Tokyo was her hometown. For her, going back was the most natural thing in the world.
Haruto, however, did not have that freedom. He was an old friend of Sora's father, and his entire family was in Tokushima. That was not the kind of choice a man could make lightly, nor alone.
By the time the numbers were finalized, the result was clear: very few people were willing to leave Tokushima and relocate to Tokyo.
Still, Sora had already made preparations on the other side. Through reliable contacts introduced by Ryo Yukishiro, he had spent money to recruit staff and start assembling the foundation of the new headquarters.
And when there was a name, a reputation, and a future worth betting on, things moved quickly.
After all, the new anime by Sora Kamakawa - the same one that had won three major awards at the previous quarter's animation festival - was hiring and opening a head office in Tokyo. There was no shortage of talented people eager to join.
Time passed almost without notice, and before anyone realized it, late January had arrived.
During that stretch in Tokushima, Sora had used every gap in his schedule to do what mattered most: write the first half of the script for Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World from Zero.
Since it was planned as a two-cour series, airing continuously across the summer and autumn seasons, the structure naturally had to be divided into two halves as well.
And at that moment, Re:Zero had finally taken its first truly meaningful step toward production.
Sora sent a copy of the first half of the script to the production department of the Southern Alliance TV network. The station did not interfere directly with his creative process, but that did not mean they would remain completely hands-off. It was only natural that they would still follow the script, the production plan, and the overall schedule alongside him as the supervising creator.
Within the company, the first people to read it were Sumire and Yumi Noriko.
Sumire opened the script slowly.
"Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World from Zero."
In Sora's version, the characters' names retained the original Western fantasy flavor, and it worked. Even the protagonist's name, Subaru Natsuki, still felt acceptable within that setting. Because of that, he had seen no reason to alter any of the names.
The story began almost painfully normally.
A completely ordinary boy, Subaru Natsuki, stepped out of a convenience store with his groceries in hand. Then, without warning, the scenery in front of him shifted, and he was thrown into another world.
A beginning so standard it was almost aggressively familiar. The sort of opening that seemed to follow every isekai cliché without resistance.
There was the apple seller with the intimidating face.
The beautiful female thief.
The silver-haired girl pursuing her.
The three thugs in the alley.
The first episode's script placed unusual emphasis on certain details that, at first glance, seemed too insignificant to matter. Small things. Almost trivial things. The protagonist got beaten by the thugs, was saved by the silver-haired girl, met her by chance, learned her name, and then ended up helping her search for the insignia she had lost.
Up to that point, it was ordinary. So ordinary that it bordered on predictable.
To Sumire, the setup resembled countless other fantasy adventure anime. It was easy to imagine the story developing in the usual way: the protagonist, the heroine, shared experiences, growing intimacy, romantic tension, and everything else that typically followed. If it continued down that road, it would be nothing more than another unremarkable series.
But the turning point came at the end of the first episode.
While tracking the stolen insignia, the two of them arrived at a wooden shack.
And then they died.
Both of them.
The silver-haired girl and the protagonist alike, cut down without mercy.
In the next scene, Subaru was suddenly back in front of the apple vendor's stall. The man, wearing the same rough expression as before, asked in the same harsh tone whether he was going to buy an apple or not.
When she reached that point, Sumire stopped for several seconds.
Her eyes remained fixed on the page, but her mind was already racing to put everything together.
This was…
Even though she was not especially familiar with games, she still knew the concept. A save point. In countless games, when the character died, they returned to an earlier point, and the flow of the story reset along with them.
Now it made sense.
Earlier, the script had placed strange emphasis on the apple seller. And now he was there again, in the same moment, repeating the same interaction at the exact same point in the narrative.
Sumire understood immediately.
A death loop.
That alone was enough to spark genuine interest in the story.
That afternoon, she devoured the rest of the material without noticing the time. In one sitting, she read through the repeated life-and-death confrontations between Subaru and the Bowel Hunter. She watched the protagonist die and return over and over until Reinhard finally appeared and shattered the cycle of slaughter that, in every previous loop, had ended with both Subaru and Emilia completely wiped out.
Then came the Roswaal mansion. Subaru's interactions with Rem and Ram. The daily life that seemed peaceful on the surface but rotted underneath. The repeated deaths. The suspicion. The resets. The murders that started all over again just when he thought he had come closer to the truth.
Worse still, she saw Subaru forced to witness Rem's death again and again.
She also saw the point where, in order to save her, that utterly ordinary boy - terrified of pain, terrified of dying, lacking any conventional kind of heroism - chose to kill himself with his own hands just to return once more. And even then, the knowledge he gained through those loops brought him no comfort. No one could understand what he carried. No one could comprehend where his certainty came from. On the contrary, people doubted him, judged him, and at times even wanted to kill him.
The more Sumire read, the quieter she became.
From the perspective of the people living in the final successful timeline, it was nothing more than a dangerous crisis that ended safely. A terrible scare, perhaps, but one they had overcome without losing anyone.
But from the vantage point of someone who could see everything, Sumire knew the truth.
She knew how many timelines had been broken and remade.
She knew how many times Subaru had failed.
She knew how many deaths, how much torture, how many hopeless endings he had been forced to endure in order to reach a single path where the people he cared about could survive.
And no one knew any of it.
No one.
What remained in her chest was a dull ache, almost physical in its weight.
Because he was not some legendary warrior. He was not a genius. He was not someone blessed with a convenient power. He was just an ordinary boy, thrown into a world full of monsters, fanatics, assassins, and people infinitely stronger than he was. And in the face of all that darkness, the only weapon he truly possessed was his own life.
Dying and returning was not some perfect gift.
It was a curse.
In games, a player only had to die a few times before frustration set in. Fatigue, irritation, discouragement. It was easy to put the controller down and walk away.
But Subaru had no such luxury.
He did not die two or three times for dramatic effect. He died for real. He died in pain. He died brutally. He died dozens of times, carrying the memory of every agony, every fear, every moment he had been torn apart, murdered, or driven into despair. And even so, he still had to stand back up, keep his sanity intact, and step into yet another loop knowing he might be butchered again.
When she finally finished the first half of the script, Sumire closed the pages and gave her honest opinion.
"Isn't this script a little too cruel?"
Sora lifted his eyes to her.
"Did you think it was bad?"
She thought for a moment before answering.
"No. I thought it was good. Very good, actually. I like this kind of story… one where an ordinary person keeps moving forward simply because they refuse to give up, because they keep pushing, because they pour everything they have into reaching what they want." Her voice softened slightly. "But the amount of malice and pain you force onto Subaru in the process is overwhelming. I'm worried the audience will immerse themselves in his suffering too deeply, and that it'll push them into dropping the show and turning on it."
Sora gave a faint smile.
"That won't happen."
If it had been another scriptwriter, that comment alone might have been enough to shake his confidence. It might have led him to soften scenes, trim away the harshness, or make the experience easier to endure.
But Sora knew exactly what kind of story this was.
Yes, some viewers might walk away because of it. That was inevitable. But the ones who stayed until the end would be the very people who pushed the series' reputation and impact to the highest peak among other-world fantasy adventures.
He looked at her and spoke without hesitation.
"This is exactly the kind of isekai story I love."
There was a brief pause before he continued, his voice carrying the certainty of someone who already knew how deeply this story could wound people - and stay with them.
"The story of an ordinary boy. Strong-willed, imaginative, scared of dying, terrified of pain, and completely human… who throws everything he has into protecting the people he treasures in another world."
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- CHRONICLES OF THE ICE SOVEREIGN
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-THE OTHER WORLD'S ANIMATOR
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