Chapter 5: Pencil Lines and Comets
The glow of Kenji Oura's monitor lit up the darkened corner of Studio Yamato's third-floor bullpen. It was nearly midnight. The rest of the team had long since cleared out, leaving empty chairs and stale coffee cups as evidence of their hours-long battles with in-betweens and keyframes.
Kenji was still there, pencil tapping rhythmically against the desk as he stared at the paused video on his screen.
The title bar read: "Untitled Future Anime – Stream Clip Archive (Partial)"
His friend Daigo had sent him the link via an obscure IRC room earlier that night with no context—just a line that read, "Kenji, this will fck you up. Just watch."*
Kenji had almost ignored it. He was behind on frames for the current project, a generic romcom set in an all-girls high school, and the schedule was brutal. But curiosity, or maybe boredom, got the better of him.
And now he couldn't look away.
The clip had no credits, no studio logo, no production tags. Nothing but a name buried in the stream overlay: RetroCal. Whoever that was.
But the animation… it wasn't just good.
It was breathtaking.
Kenji scrubbed the playback bar backward and watched a scene again—a train crossing the Tokyo skyline as the camera tilted up, revealing the comet splitting the sky in slow, glowing descent.
He paused on a frame. Zoomed in. Studied the light reflections on the glass, the subtle flutter of the girl's hair inside the train, the way her eyes caught the fading colors of dusk.
He'd never seen compositing this subtle. Not in anything airing in 2010. Not even from the greats.
"Who made this?" he muttered, leaning closer.
His tablet stylus lay forgotten on the desk.
He rewound the scene again.
Kenji Oura was only twenty-three. Fresh out of vocational school. Just a year into the industry grind. He had entered animation wide-eyed, thinking he'd change the world with his art. That belief had faded fast.
Schedules crushed ambition. Corrections stacked endlessly. Creativity became an afterthought.
Most nights, he collapsed at his desk wondering if he'd made a mistake.
But now—watching this—he remembered.
He remembered why he wanted to be an animator.
It wasn't about commercial success. It wasn't even about recognition.
It was about feeling something.
The film—whatever it was—wasn't flashy in a loud way. It didn't need explosions or fanservice or forced comedy. It was honest. Poetic. The kind of story that left something behind in the silence.
He jotted a note in the corner of his sketchpad:
"Comet. Sky. Memory. That feeling of reaching—but not quite remembering."
He wasn't even sure what that meant, but he knew it mattered.
Kenji clicked back to the beginning of the clip. The first few seconds were choppy—someone had recorded the screen with a camcorder. Low quality. But he caught a glimpse of the overlay text.
[RetroCal – Private Stream (19 viewers)]
[Film: "Kimi no Na wa." – Unknown Release]
[Estimated Origin Year: 2016]
"2016? What the hell?" he said aloud.
He googled the title. Nothing. No announcements, no rumors. Not even a hint of a name like Makoto Shinkai attached to a project like this.
And yet…
He opened the comments section of the upload. Sparse. Mostly anonymous. A few ASCII faces. But one message stood out.
"the uploader said it's from the future. don't ask how. just watch and remember how it made you feel."
Kenji leaned back in his chair.
Was it a hoax? An elaborate indie project?
He didn't know. And it didn't matter.
Whoever "RetroCal" was, they had something. Something real.
The next morning, Kenji came in early, sleep-deprived but electrified. The team wouldn't arrive until 9:30. He had time.
He slipped into the art director's office without knocking.
Seiji Nakamura was a legend in their little studio—a gruff, chain-smoking veteran of the hand-drawn era who had helped storyboard hits in the early 2000s. He didn't tolerate nonsense.
Kenji placed a USB stick on the desk.
"I know we're slammed, sir," he said, voice steady. "But I need you to see this."
Nakamura didn't even look up from his coffee.
"Is this another one of your student projects?"
"No, sir. It's… something I found. I think it's important."
Nakamura narrowed his eyes. The old man wasn't known for curiosity. But something in Kenji's tone must have landed.
He plugged the USB in. Clicked the file.
As the film began, Kenji watched him closely. The director's brows furrowed. Then relaxed. By the halfway mark, his cigarette had burned out completely. He hadn't moved.
When it ended, the screen went black.
Nakamura exhaled slowly.
"…That wasn't a student project."
Kenji nodded.
"No idea who made it," he said. "No credits. No studio. Just a name: RetroCal."
The silence stretched.
Then Nakamura said something that would stay with Kenji forever:
"This… This is the kind of film that makes people quit. Or rise."
Within days, whispers spread through the art departments.
Someone had seen a mysterious stream.
Someone had downloaded a ripped copy of a film not yet born.
A few quiet animators started sharing stills, breaking down key scenes. Forums lit up in underground circles—threads buried beneath the usual noise. Some called it a hoax. Others believed it was an unreleased art film, hidden by some obscure director.
But the animators?
They knew.
They could feel it in their bones.
This wasn't just a good movie. It was a message in a bottle from the future of animation itself.
Kenji didn't try to track RetroCal down.
He didn't need to.
The mystery only added to the inspiration. He poured himself into his work with a new hunger, refining backgrounds, experimenting with light, pushing for atmospheric framing. He began sketching in his spare time again—not for assignments, but for himself.
In the weeks that followed, his quiet passion began to stand out. Directors took notice. He was invited to sit in on layout meetings. One producer even asked if he wanted to try boarding a sequence.
Something was changing.
And at the center of it all, like a silent echo, was Your Name.
One night, back at his tiny apartment, Kenji sat on his floor, surrounded by sketches and notes. The screen still flickered with the paused comet scene.
He opened a clean page in his notebook.
He wrote at the top: Dear RetroCal.
Then hesitated.
He wouldn't send it. There was no address, no inbox, no account to DM.
But still, he wrote.
I don't know who you are or how you did it. But you showed me a version of animation I didn't think we could reach yet.
And more than that… you reminded me of why I draw in the first place.
So wherever you are—thank you.
—Kenji
He closed the notebook.
Somewhere out there, in a different world or time, a lone streamer had changed something. Not with millions of views. Not with fame.
But with a film. A whisper.
And in the heart of a young animator working late, that whisper had become a spark.
End of Chapter 5