#futsu rintarou

[x0401x]

Hoshiai no Sora >> Concept Art from the Official Twitter

[transterry]

some hoshiai no sora kids (and adult)

[kurozero]

"Thank you, Maki."

[stardoopy]

the shameless catperson-ification of Stars Align

[thenon-fictiondays]

I cope with stress by ignoring the 1340913 things I should be doing and making dumb memes

Edit: I fixed the egregious error I made in regards to Itsuki and his “plays by the rules” alignment, please carry on reblogging this post

[mysticnightmarestarlight]

They really just put me in the latest HNS episode, didn't they?

[dennou-translations]

Hoshiai no Sora Translations Index

Cast Comments:

Main Cast Q&A

Mantan Web: Hanae Natsuki and Hatanaka Tasuku

Mantan Web: Matsuoka Yoshitsugu and Satou Gen

Mantan Web: Toyonaga Toshiyuki and Satou Keisuke

Mantan Web: Kobayashi Yuusuke and Amasaki Kouhei

Mantan Web: Yamaya Yoshitaka

Mantan Web: Mineda Mayu

Mantan Web: Akane Kazuki

Post-Broadcast Twitter Thread

Interviews:

TBS Anime Festa Pamphlet (Akane Kazuki)

Asahi (Akane Kazuki)

Cookpad Volume 1

Cookpad Volume 2

Cookpad Volume 3

Cookpad Volume 4

LisAni (AIKI from Bless4)

Music Natalie (Akane Kazuki)

WHAT’s IN? Tokyo (Jizue)

Akiba Souken (Jizue)

Extras:

Q&A with Akane Kazuki

Production Notes

[slumberken]

Hoshiai no Sora | Stars Align

simple wallpapers! like/reblog are highly appreciated<3

[x0401x]

Hoshiai no Sora Official Design Works

[anime-end-cards]

Stars Align

Episode 7 end card by Itsuka

[brightersoul2]

[Hoshiai no Sora - episode 7]

[stardoopy]

doodle batch....TWO

[mlskb]

3話で推しがすでに決まっている、、

帰り道で初めて「樹」と呼び捨てにしてる凜太朗くん、眞己や樹のように直情的に自分の気持ちが言えない、というか行動が取れないし、、そういう人に憧れちゃう、心が優しい副部長、、、大好き。（大緊張）

[thenon-fictiondays]

I had to

[mysticnightmarestarlight]

Why does everyone in this anime have some big ass family issues? I thought this was about some soft tennis high school club but instead of getting hyped, I just want to give every character a big ass hug

[dennou-translations]

TBS Pamphlet Interview with Director Akane Kazuki

Raw || Index

Note: This interview is from TBS Anime Festa 2018, where Hoshiai no Sora premiered back in August. The pamphlet also includes a mini interview with Itsuka, but this one sadly wasn’t in TBS’s site.

——Please tell us how you decided to make an original work this time.

Akane: I had been thinking about all sorts of things for ten or so years, but then my staff asked me, “How about you stop making sci-fi and parallel universe stuff and try making something original?”. And so, since about five years ago, I had been feeling like tackling some sort of new genre.

I joined this industry roughly in the 85’s. It was exactly the period of the Gundam Boom, and I think that Gundam caused a new movement and has always been riding on its flow until now. Animation is entertainment, but I believe its trends are becoming specially strong nowadays and I feel like it is already turning into something closer to amusement movies. But the young creators can be the ones doing that. As for us, it has been more than thirty years that we have been in this business already, so isn’t it about time for us to move on to new branches and possibilities of animation? Aren’t we already at ages where it is all right for us to create new things now? While thinking about such things, I received this story.

——Was the theme in your head from the start?

Akane: When I first received the order, I think I was expecting a series based a little more on current animation – in other words, on entertainment. Yet I was like, “Isn’t it okay to not do just that, but also test out something like the possibilities of animation?”. I, for myself, want to reflect the eras through animation. I had a strong feeling of wanting to try and create not only animation simply about the funny and weird aspects of the current times, but that also properly expresses the suffering and worries of young children in particular, and other such things. Of course, it was going to be aired in television, so the fact that it is entertainment goes without saying, but I think it would be great if we had a plus alpha there, and if we managed to successfully trace the emotions and thoughts of young kids into a drama.

——What was the reason for choosing “soft tennis” as theme?

Akane: There is also the fact that I have experience with it, but I think soft tennis is a sport that seems like a characteristic of puberty and boyhood. Even though the number of competitors is enormous among middle schoolers, it cuts to about half when they become high schoolers, and when they become college students and posteriorly adults, almost nobody is doing it anymore. It made me think that this tendency was the same as some sort of teenage feeling. We also forget things that were very obvious to us during adolescence when we grow up. I wonder if this doesn’t link up rather well with emotional traits. Plus, there are no professional players in soft tennis. In a way, we can say that it is a sport with no self-interest. It is neither for the sake of earning money nor for becoming famous. We occasionally can see pubescent children make moves without calculations as well. However, around the time they become high schoolers, they gradually start looking ahead and thinking about the future. In short, self-interest starts being born. In that sense, I thought this sport was as pure as adolescence.

——What are the two main characters like?

Akane: This will be the story of children who carry with them all sorts of scars, yet I believe I want to make it into a tale of friends who do not lick each other’s wounds at all, but instead fill up and compensate for them. I cannot go into detail, but those two, who have certain problems in their home environments, want to run away but are unable to because they are middle schoolers. If they were adults, they could get away from it by leaving, but middle schoolers cannot afford to do that, so they end up bearing wounds in their hearts. Those are the types of wounds that people forget when they become adults, but I want to try properly expressing them and writing about how they will overcome them and grow up. In this sense, I also want adults to remember their own. The wounds that they used to carry. And realize that they are the ones hurting children now. I want to make it into a drama that causes people to feel what is happening in real time.

——Aside from home circumstances, how will the schools and club activities be depicted?

Akane: The boys’ soft tennis club, which will appear in this story, is a bit of a flighty existence even within the school, so if I had to say so myself, they are looked down upon. They have not had a victory in four years and are on the brink of being disbanded. As they are asked if a club like that has any right to exist, they themselves give up at first. Like, “We can’t do anything anyway”. Then, a chemical reaction happens as the main character, Katsuragi Maki, joins the club. To put it in an extreme way, this starts off as the story of a group of losers. There is nothing so terrible in the real world like being losers while middle schoolers, but our society does want to say such things about them. But I want to tell children, “Don’t give up; overcome that standard”. It might be fiction that only happens within animation either way, but I want to create a drama like this. Of course, sci-fi dramas where people try to survive in crumbling worlds are also interesting, but I want to make a drama about boys living in a realistic world while preserving their pride and identities. That might be the main theme this time.

——It seems this will be a work full of things to observe, but director, what is the point you want people to pay most attention to?

Akane: I am thinking of trying my first approach on the current situation of our society, which I had not depicted so much in animation until now. Many things that have not been a topic even in the news or the internet until now are the subject in it. I also want to get to the heart of the issues that the world is burdened with nowadays. That is quite a challenge for animation, but I believe that animation is also becoming a type of media that can portray such things. Of course, just being funny and weird would is okay too, but I want to make a drama that will not be only this, and that will make the people watching respond more strongly to it. I do not know how deep we can go or until what point we can bring out results, but I would be happy if people could pay attention to this part and think together with the characters.

——Please tell us your reason for choosing Itsuka-san for the character drafts.

Akane: It will turn into a rather serious story, so in my mind, I had imagined them as more realistic characters. That is why, when a producer introduced me to Itsuka-san, I thought at first, “I wonder about this”, but I thought it over, like, “Isn’t the imbalance of something serious like that with a design such as this very much like Japanese anime? Isn’t it a little wrong to make them realistic characters just because it’s a realistic story?”. The art that Itsuka-san draws is very sensible, and this drama is also done in an extremely delicate way, so in that sense, it is perfect. We are often misunderstood, and just because the theme is soft tennis, people go, “Akane-san, you’re making something rooted in sports this time?” (laughs). I wanted to rebound these preconception-like comments, and thought of trying my hand at challenging myself with directing an animation that used Itsuka-san’s sensible characters. In fact, we made videos as a test, and they were very easy to get familiar with.

——Then, lastly, please leave a message for the people looking forward to when it airs.

Akane: Both drama and art-wise, I am thinking of doing a new challenge and forming a new world-building, so I would be happy if people could also look forward to the synchronization between drama and art. I think it will be a peculiar anime, but I want to make it into a series that will cause people to feel the difference in that instead, so please wait for it to air while looking forward to it.