Newcomer Haruna Mochizuki Cast as Lead in 'The Lantern-Keeper'

Tomoshibi Animation held a press event at its Kyobashi headquarters on the 11th, announcing that newcomer voice actor Haruna Mochizuki, 24, has been cast in the lead role of "The Lantern-Keeper," the new series set for a spring premiere, previously reported. Mochizuki has worked mainly in small theater productions and is taking on her first anime lead. Director Kureha explained the choice: "Her audition had exactly the quiet quality of hands lighting a lamp, carried in the voice alone. I chose her not for experience but for the sense that no other voice would do."

The lead role is a boy who inherits, generation after generation, the duty of lighting lamps in a fictionalized city built on Lineage 7, "the Lit City." Asked about being cast as a boy despite being a woman, Mochizuki said, "I think what mattered was less my gender than whether my stance toward the light felt close enough to the role." A producer at the event added, "The heart of this casting was whether the gestures of 'the rite,' as described in the observation materials, could carry conviction through voice alone."

The day's first script read-through was opened to the press. Mochizuki repeated a passage describing the lamp-lighting ritual several times, at one point receiving direction from Kureha to "speak a little more at the pace of someone recalling the steps." During a break, she told reporters, "I read through the observation materials, but the premise that no one actually knows what daily life over there is like ended up freeing me, in a way. My only rule is not to perform not-knowing as if I knew." Her words echoed almost exactly the production policy Kureha had described previously reported — never pretending to know what isn't known.

As previously reported, the project drew inspiration in part from this paper's own Dimensional Survey reporting. At the event, Kureha again recalled that a line from a window keeper's log — "I watch their morning" — became the first line of the pitch document. "When I heard Mochizuki's voice," he said, "it finally felt like that one line had become a person's voice." Rin Toda, this paper's Dimensional Survey reporter, commented, "It's a strange feeling, hearing a real voice actor read a line born from my own article. I hope Mochizuki gets to hear the keepers' own stories firsthand someday."

As previously reported, the TDA's Dimensional Survey Division has approved use of already-published observation material and says it was consulted in advance on today's casting announcement. "We won't comment on the work itself, but we've confirmed nothing beyond the released scope was used," an official said.

The theme song remains undecided, as previously reported. "Now that we have a sense of Mochizuki's voice, it's easier to settle the song's direction too," the producer said. "I think we can announce it before long." Mochizuki closed the event by saying, "Projecting a voice this way is nothing like the stage, and I'm still finding my footing. I hope this becomes, for someone, a way into enjoying something you don't understand." The series is set to air next spring in TCT's Saturday evening slot, twelve episodes in all.