We Are Aliens spotlights Konatsu in new trailer before release

We Are Aliens received a new trailer devoted to Konatsu on Tuesday, September 15, focusing on Tsubasa’s childhood classmate and one of the characters who appears across multiple stages of the story. The preview arrived with a new character visual, ten days before the film’s Japanese theatrical release on September 25, 2026.

The video begins with ordinary exchanges between Tsubasa and Konatsu in elementary school, when they live near each other and deliver classroom notebooks whenever one of them is absent. It then moves into their teenage years and shows them walking home together. A note Konatsu writes to Tsubasa and the boy’s hesitant attempt to tell her something establish the edit’s central idea: emotional distance changes as the characters grow up, even when their familiarity remains.

Ten Yamasaki makes her voice-acting debut as Konatsu

Teenage Konatsu is voiced by Sakurazaka46 member Ten Yamasaki in her first animation voice role. Saki Suzuki, selected through an audition, plays the character as a child. According to statements released by the production, director Kohei Kadowaki asked Yamasaki to listen to Suzuki’s performance and initially match its pace, pitch and distinctive speech patterns before balancing those qualities with her own voice. That account explains why the trailer spans two versions of the character: vocal continuity is part of the dramatic construction, not merely a casting detail.

Yamasaki said she had long wanted to try voice work but found the unfamiliar process difficult. She also said the script reminded her of the awkward, hard-to-name emotions of adolescence. These comments represent the performer’s and production team’s descriptions of their work, rather than an independent judgment of the finished performance.

The preview expands the film’s central relationship

The main story follows Tsubasa, voiced by Ryota Bando, and Gyotaro, played by Amane Okayama. They meet in third grade in a small Japanese town, but a rupture between them sets off consequences that extend across roughly 30 years of friendship, memory and guilt. By shifting the new promotional focus to Konatsu, the studio shows how that long trajectory is also witnessed by people close to the two leads without replacing the conflict between the friends.

Kadowaki conceived, wrote and directed the film, his feature-length debut. Yaffle composed the score and wrote “Sasakure,” the theme performed by adieu. Japan’s NOTHING NEW produced the film with France’s Miyu Productions, while TOHO NEXT and NOTHING NEW are handling distribution in Japan.

Before its commercial release, We Are Aliens had its world premiere in the 2026 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and competed in Annecy’s official feature-film selection. Those appearances are confirmed by the festivals themselves; selection does not, on its own, amount to an award or guarantee broad critical consensus.

A Tokyo exhibition will display production materials

The release will be accompanied by a free exhibition on the seventh floor of Shinjuku Marui Annex in Tokyo from September 25 through October 4. Organizers say it will recreate part of the production workspace and display original drawings, storyboards and other development materials. It will open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends.

As of September 15, the reviewed official materials confirm the Japanese release but do not announce a commercial international release date. Any timetable for other markets would therefore remain speculation.