March 1st was a special day for Starfall, because it was the day Clannad's PV was going live.
A "PV" was essentially a promotional trailer, usually about a minute long. The footage in a PV would typically show up later in the actual anime. Some PVs were just a selection of scenes pulled straight from the finished episodes.
Of course, there were always exceptions.
Generally, by the time a PV dropped, the broadcast date was also locked in.
And Clannad's premiere date had indeed been confirmed: April 7th at 5:00 PM.
It would air on TBS, also known as Tokyo Broadcasting System.
Inside the Starfall studio, everyone gathered together to watch Clannad's PV. When it was over, the compliments started rolling in.
"That was really good."
"The girls in this are just ridiculously cute."
"The president really pulled it off."
"The art style is pretty polished too. I think audiences will be into it."
"I don't know about audiences, but I'm personally sold."
...
Yuta was satisfied as well.
He couldn't call it a perfect recreation, but based on this PV, the fidelity was impressively high. At the very least, the character designs, art style, and music were all very close to the original.
As for the story, voice acting, and storyboarding, you couldn't judge any of that from a one-minute trailer. Those would have to wait until the actual episodes came out.
The voice cast wasn't going to be a perfect match, and there was no way around that. But since Yuta had personally handled the script and storyboards, accuracy on those fronts wasn't a concern.
Worth mentioning: the music for Starfall's version of Clannad was also Yuta's doing, though almost nobody knew that yet. He owed that to the fact that before he transmigrated, he'd been an amateur singer. He had studied music theory and knew how to transcribe scores by ear.
Without that background, no matter how vivid his memories were, recreating the music to this degree would have been impossible.
But the people at Starfall were production staff. Just because they liked the PV didn't mean the audience would feel the same way.
Yuta opened a computer nearby and started checking the online reception of Clannad's PV.
"This PV actually looks pretty decent."
"A school-setting bishoujo anime?"
"The art style is surprisingly polished."
"The girls in this anime are way too cute!"
"Looks interesting."
"Might be worth keeping an eye on."
The initial wave of comments was overwhelmingly positive, which made Yuta immediately wonder if Arcane had hired people to post fake reviews.
But thinking about it more carefully, the comments actually made fair points.
The PV really was good.
If someone from 2021 watched Clannad, they might find the art style a bit dated. But this was 2006. Anime in 2006 all had a similar look, and audiences weren't nearly as picky. Compared to what else was out there, Clannad's art style was genuinely refined.
The cute female characters were also a fact. The original had been produced by Kyoto Animation, and Yuta had drawn his versions by directly referencing theirs.
When KyoAni made Clannad, the whole "KyoAni face" meme hadn't really become a thing yet, but they were already masters at drawing appealing female characters that perfectly matched audience tastes.
Sure, a lot of the girls ended up with similar face shapes, but again, this was 2006. Audiences weren't that strict about it, and every other bishoujo anime had cookie-cutter faces too.
In a head-to-head comparison, Clannad's character designs could blow the competition out of the water.
These positive reviews might actually be genuine. They might not be paid shills after all.
Yuta quietly let out a breath of relief, but it wasn't long before he noticed something was off.
The new comments were no longer overwhelmingly positive. They had become overwhelmingly negative.
"Isn't Starfall the company that made Heartbeat House and humiliated Director Wasabi?"
"A garbage studio making a good anime? Yeah right."
"Don't be fooled, people. Their PVs always look passable, but just wait until the anime actually airs and you'll see what false advertising really looks like."
"Character designer, director, scriptwriter, music composer, and they haven't announced any of those credits? That's a first."
"Who's the voice actress for the female lead? Mei Shirayuki? Never heard of her."
"For a bishoujo anime, the most important thing is the girls, and this company couldn't even bother casting popular voice actresses. Instead they picked some complete unknown. What a joke."
"Forget the lead. None of the other female characters have well-known voice actresses either."
"Garbage anime. Boycotting it."
...
Reading through the wave of vicious negative reviews, Yuta was stunned. 'What is going on? Are we getting review-bombed?'
It wasn't that he had a double standard where only praise was allowed and criticism wasn't.
But the reviews had just been overwhelmingly positive a moment ago, and now they had flipped to overwhelmingly negative. That kind of sudden swing practically screamed that someone was either steering the narrative or flooding the comments with fake reviews.
Besides, Clannad's PV was genuinely good. That was just a fact.
The first suspect that popped into Yuta's mind was Lumen.
But he couldn't quite figure it out.
Was the grudge between Lumen and Starfall really that deep? Getting involved in the Genma Wasabi drama was one thing, but now they were review-bombing Clannad's PV too? Was that really necessary? Or was it possible that it wasn't Lumen at all, but some other party?
After thinking it over, he pulled out his phone and called Aoi Fuji.
When she picked up, he described everything he had found in detail.
Aoi listened carefully, then said, "It could very well be Lumen, but it could also be someone else whose interests are tied to Lumen's."
"What do you mean?" Yuta asked right away.
"Lumen's anime project was the one we passed on at Arcane, but they ended up getting their funding from Aniflex. Also, according to some insider buzz I've been hearing, their PV is going to drop in a couple of days, and their premiere is set for April 6th at 10:30 PM," Aoi explained.
"So? What does that have to do with anything?" Yuta wasn't following.
"You were there that day, so you know their new anime is also a bishoujo title."
"Hmm..."
"Not just bishoujo. It's also a school-set slice-of-life, and the director they hired is none other than Genma, the same man you kicked off the production team. The scriptwriter is Genma's buddy Yuma Amagi, who also wrote the script for First Love Island."
"..."
At first Yuta couldn't understand why Lumen would bother review-bombing Clannad's PV, but now it was starting to make sense.
Both anime fell into the same category: school setting, slice-of-life, bishoujo. And with their premiere dates so close together, the two shows were in direct competition.
Clannad's PV had come out first, and a wall of glowing reviews was the last thing they wanted to see. It would make things very uncomfortable when Lumen's own PV dropped in a few days.
Even if it meant playing dirty, they needed to drag Clannad down. And since Lumen and Starfall were already enemies, there was no need to worry about burning bridges.
Of course, this was still just speculation. Without hard evidence, nobody could say for sure whether Lumen was behind the fake reviews.
"It's just a PV, and these are just online comments. It's not a big deal. I'll handle it on my end. You just focus on making the anime as good as it can be and don't worry about the rest," Aoi said.
"Got it." Yuta nodded.
Promotion and distribution were Arcane's responsibility. There was no point in him overthinking it.
For Starfall, making the best anime they could was what mattered most.
As long as the quality was there, no amount of mudslinging could hurt them.
_______________________
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