Worlds observed
from just outside them.
Stardust Production is an independent IP development studio creating original animated, interactive and spatial narratives — story-driven worlds shaped by atmosphere, emotion and a distinct visual language.
Development Slate
Co-production
IP Portfolio
RIME
A story of first love and its unraveling, where a girl's repressed emotions take physical form and pursue her through a single night.
Cat Story (untitled)
A cat who found fame among humans starts to resent everything that still makes him one — including his own brother.
in:love
The interior monologue of a woman who passes as human but knows she isn't — and hopes, quietly, that someone might see what she really is and love her anyway.
Game IP (working title)
A quest-style adventure about two unlikely companions — a young elf mage and a cat magician, stranded together — learning to actually get along.
to be (working title)
A sequence of vast, fog-laden ruins visitors move through in silence — witnessing, not filming — built as a quiet resistance to noise.
RIME — Rainbow in My Eyes
When her first love betrays her in public, Kimi Sawada spirals into a single night's journey through a city consumed by her own repressed emotions — and must learn to face them before they consume her.
RIME is a 2D animated feature about first heartbreak and the difficult process of learning what love can be. After her idealized vision of love collapses, high school student Kimi Sawada moves through a city where her repressed emotions begin to take physical form. Along the way, she encounters people whose lives reveal different forms and understandings of love. Their stories challenge her belief that love is proven by perfection or by living happily ever after. Kimi gradually discovers that love may instead lie in the ability to find harmony within an imperfect life. Much of what she sees is difficult for her to accept, but each time she opens her heart enough to truly hear another person, her own wounds begin, little by little, to heal.
Cat Story — untitled
When success among humans makes Yuki ashamed of everything that marks him as a cat — including his own kid brother — he must confront what that shame has already cost him.
Cat Story follows Yuki, a cat whose ink drawings have made him an overnight sensation among human audiences. As his fame grows, so does his discomfort with everything that betrays what he actually is — his claws, his instincts, and his younger brother Haru, whose unselfconscious cat-ness Yuki increasingly finds embarrassing. At his own gallery opening, Yuki discovers exactly what his ambition has cost: Haru, alone and unnoticed, has become a curiosity for the crowd, his paw guided across paper for their amusement rather than his own expression. A quiet short film about the shame of trying to outgrow your own nature — and what it takes to remember who you are before there's no one left to remind you.
in:love
A woman who looks human but knows she isn't spends her days learning to hide — and hoping, quietly, that someone might see exactly what she is and love her anyway.
in:love follows the interior monologue of a woman who looks human, dresses like everyone else and moves unnoticed through crowded platforms and sunlit beaches — yet knows, with quiet dread, that she is not one of them. Her hands are shaped wrong. Her feet don't quite belong to this world. She has spent years perfecting the art of not being noticed: watching people rather than joining them, certain that discovery is always one careless moment away. Beneath that fear lies a quieter hope — that among the countless strangers she passes, someone might see her exactly as she is and love her anyway. The film never explains what she is. Instead, it asks what it costs to live as something you're not — and what might change if, for once, you allow yourself to be seen.
Game IP — working title
Stranded together by fate in a world where no one else exists, a young elf mage and a cat magician must learn to actually get along — or neither of them will get anywhere at all.
A narrative quest adventure centered on two playable characters: a young elf mage and a cat magician, stranded together in an unfamiliar, seemingly empty world. The player controls both characters, using their different abilities to explore, solve environmental challenges and uncover why they have been brought together. At its heart, the game is about learning how to be a good friend. Each character has their own abilities, needs and limits. Treating the other carelessly damages their relationship; paying attention, taking responsibility and making amends allows trust to grow. The quest can only move forward when the two learn to value each other not as useful companions, but as friends. Friendship demands effort — and is worth far more than either of them initially understands.
to be
A sequence of vast, fog-laden ruins visitors move through in silence — witnessing, not filming — built as a quiet resistance to noise.
to be is an immersive spatial experience built around the gradual stripping away of noise. Visitors move through a sequence of vast, high-ceilinged spaces — dim, moss-covered and thick with fog, closer to an excavation site than an exhibition. Together, they form the ruins of an analog civilization: handwritten text projected onto suspended fabric, digital panels embedded in cracked stone and wood, and silhouetted figures moving behind fractured walls. As the journey unfolds, layers of accumulated interference — images, information, constant self-presentation and the impulse to document — begin to fall away. At its center, a performance takes place around a towering installation: something to witness, but not to enter. Phones are left at the door. Nothing is meant to be recorded. The experience does not ask visitors to become someone new. It creates enough silence for them to hear what remains beneath the noise: the simplest awareness of being.
Let's Talk
Open to conversations with producers, curators, and development partners about any of the projects above.
info@stardustproduction.jp