Remembering an anime one day led me to a story about a cake shop and one of its customers. They see each other regularly, but never quite move beyond that relationship. I tried turning that small distance into “Shortcake,” a song using Miyazaki dialect.
I wanted the video to leave room for misunderstandings and things left unsaid. Making a good image for one line of the song was one thing. Making those images belong to the same story all the way through was harder than I expected.
Making the chorus handoff visible
Early on, I spent time making more images and checking different screen shapes before settling the flow of the whole song. I already had an artboard and character sheet that showed the shop, the town, and the people. I should have spent more time with those references before pushing ahead.
The first chorus was the part I most needed to revisit. When the lyric says he gave her a shortcake, I wanted to see that happen. Having the two characters near each other was not enough. I moved the cuts so that the little white box passes from his hands to hers, followed by his unspoken reaction and her smile.
Later, he hands over a whole birthday cake. It is the same gesture, but now there is a larger box and a question he cannot ask: who is it for? Keeping the two boxes distinct helped give the two choruses different weight.
When one good image did not fit the next
Putting the cuts together exposed problems I had missed in isolation. The hands cracking an egg did not seem attached to a person. A stray line across the glass divided the shop. From the kitchen, the entrance looked like the door to a different building. The woman’s hair was tied back in one cut and loose in the next.
The boxes needed just as much attention. A box that looked fine in a close-up became too large when someone held it. The order of packing the cake and tying the ribbon appeared to reverse. After the woman carried a small box away, a similar box seemed to remain in the shop.
Each time, I went back to the neighboring cuts. Where were the entrance, display case, and worktop? Who had the box, and what was inside it? It is easy to miss those questions when a single image looks nice.
Their lives outside the shop
I also noticed that several cuts showed the two of them from much the same distance. Even on the street overlooking the sea, a wide shot followed by a closer view could feel like the same moment twice.
I added empty streets and views of the shop, then short scenes of the young man out of uniform: walking through town, resting at home on a rainy day, and sitting alone in a summer park. The woman has her own days at university and with friends. Their lives continue when they are not seeing each other across the counter.
The setting is a fictional coastal town shaped by Miyazaki’s light and streets sloping toward the sea. I wanted the shop to feel as though it could belong to that everyday landscape.
What he imagines, and what she does
When she orders a birthday cake, he cannot bring himself to ask whom she will share it with. He imagines someone beside her. The video briefly shows her with friends, while leaving her feelings toward him open.
I did not want that gap to become a big twist. Sometimes one question left unasked lets a whole story grow in your head. I hoped that familiar kind of misunderstanding would come through quietly.
During production, I made a still-image animatic spanning the original 158.4-second song. I checked the images in a square frame and in landscape and vertical layouts. Seeing the whole song laid out revealed repeated compositions and small changes in where objects seemed to be.
The white box is there to carry cake. It can also look like somewhere to put the words he never said. I kept returning to the images and their order to leave a little of that feeling at the end. He can hand over the cake. The next sentence is much harder.
industrial pop / melancholic / intimateショートケーキOpen the song page for audio, lyrics, and notes.Explore this song →Thank you for reading.
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