Stories From Eibon
Stories From Eibon is a series of pre-launch short films and character trailers produced by Hotta Studio to promote Neverness to Everness, the supernatural urban open-world RPG set in the city of Hethereau. The shorts focus on the staff of the Eibon Antique Shop, the in-game base of operations where the player begins their career as an unlicensed Anomaly Hunter. Each entry in the series uses a blend of in-engine footage and stylized animated segments to give prospective players a taste of the game's tone, humor, and cast chemistry before the global launch on April 29, 2026.
The series debuted on November 27, 2024, with the first short film titled simply "Stories From Eibon," published through the official Neverness to Everness website and YouTube channel and picked up by outlets including GameSpot and GamerBraves. Rather than delivering combat spectacle or lore exposition, the shorts lean into the workplace comedy angle of the shop, showing the Espers who run it bantering, bickering, and goofing around between jobs. They form a companion piece to the more action-focused character PV trailers Hotta Studio has released for individuals such as Mint, Sakiri, and Jiuyuan.
Release and Format
The inaugural Stories From Eibon short went live on the official Neverness to Everness website and YouTube channel on November 27, 2024, as part of the long pre-launch marketing campaign leading into the April 29, 2026 global release. The video mixes in-engine footage rendered with the game's own character models and environments with illustrated, cartoon-style inserts that break away from realism for comedic beats. Outlets covering the release described the tone as playful and dreamlike, with characters goofing off before the short slides into what one writeup called "a bit of a fever dream."
The mixed-media approach is unusual for a gacha-adjacent live service launch, and it signals how Hotta Studio intends to present the cast of Eibon Antique Shop. Instead of treating each Esper as a standalone combat showcase, the shorts frame them as coworkers with overlapping routines, shared meals, and the low-stakes squabbles that come with running a small business in a city full of supernatural Anomalies. The campaign is one of several pre-launch video series from Hotta Studio, sitting alongside prologue gameplay trailers, individual character PVs, and the "Next Stop: Tokyo" and "Hello, Newcomer" Co-Ex Test spots.
Featured Cast
The shorts spotlight the confirmed staff of the Eibon Antique Shop, a small team of Espers who live and work above, below, and behind the counter of the shop. Each member brings a distinct personality, combat specialty, and backstory to the series. The table below summarizes the cast that fans will see in the Stories From Eibon videos and meet again in the full game.
Character | Role | Element | Rarity | Brief Bio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Proprietress | Cosmos | S-Class | The elegant owner of Eibon Antique Shop. Hotori holds a deep understanding of the treasures that pass through the store, enjoys a strong drink, and grows talkative when the subject turns to money. | |
Bodyguard | Chaos | S-Class | The shop's quiet, easily embarrassed bodyguard. Daffodil collects eyepatches and rarely wastes a word when action speaks louder. | |
Team Lead | Anima | S-Class | A steadfast, dignified field leader experienced in major Anomaly containment operations. Nanally keeps the team coordinated on commissions. | |
Staff | Incantation | S-Class | Quirky and innocent, always accompanied by her gluttonous companion Kiroumaru. Sakiri provides much of the series' comic relief. | |
Butler | Incantation | A-Class | The shop's butler, cook, and quiet backbone. Adler is famous among the staff for never opening his eyes, yet he handles meals and housekeeping without missing a step. | |
Staff | Cosmos | A-Class | A youthful-looking team member with a mature demeanor and old-fashioned habits. Edgar serves as a dependable pair of hands on commissions. | |
Companion | — | — | The monstrous, ever-hungry creature that follows Sakiri everywhere. More scene-stealer than threat, Kiroumaru is a fan favorite of the shorts. |
The Eibon Antique Shop Setting
Every entry in the series is anchored to the Eibon Antique Shop itself. In the fiction of Neverness to Everness, Eibon is a modest storefront in Hethereau that moonlights as the headquarters of an independent group of Anomaly Hunters. On the surface it is a curio shop full of odd trinkets, but behind the scenes the staff accept Anomaly commissions from the public to pay the bills. The shorts use this duality as a comedy engine: one minute the cast is arguing over dinner or sorting shelves, the next they are preparing for a dangerous containment job.
The physical space of the shop becomes a character in its own right. Cluttered display cases, the back room where the team plans commissions, the kitchen where Adler prepares meals, and the upper floors where staff relax all show up as recurring backdrops. By grounding the marketing in a single familiar location, Hotta Studio lets viewers build a mental map of the shop before they ever load the game, so that walking into Eibon for the first time in-game feels like returning somewhere already known.
Themes and Tone
The series leans heavily into slice-of-life comedy and ensemble chemistry. Press writeups and the official website both emphasize the workplace framing of the shop, describing Eibon as a place with "a good boss, a huge paycheck, and friendly colleagues," and promising "an array of adventures filled with laughter and tears" alongside "diverse and extraordinary partners." The shorts translate that pitch into concrete scenes of the cast eating together, poking fun at each other, and occasionally slipping into surreal visual detours.
Underneath the humor sits the larger premise of Neverness to Everness: supernatural forces coexist with modern everyday life, and someone has to clean up after them. Stories From Eibon makes a deliberate choice to introduce that world from the kitchen table outward rather than from a combat arena. The result is a tone that sits closer to a hangout anime than a traditional RPG trailer, which is uncommon for a game positioning itself as a large-scale urban fantasy action title.
Character Moments
Because the series focuses on personality rather than power fantasy, it doubles as a showcase of quirks that carry straight into the main story. Viewers see the kind of small details that tend to get buried in launch trailers: Hotori holding court over the register, Sakiri chattering at Kiroumaru between bites, Daffodil standing silently off to one side, Adler moving through the kitchen with his eyes closed, and Edgar speaking in his slightly old-fashioned cadence while everyone else argues around him.
These short character beats are useful reference for players planning their rosters. A viewer who gravitates toward Daffodil's reserved personality in the shorts may well enjoy playing her in the main game, and the same goes for every other Eibon staff member on screen. Because the cast is shown in off-duty mode, the shorts also make it easier to read the relationships between characters that combat trailers never have time for.
Viewing and Availability
The Stories From Eibon shorts are distributed free through the official Neverness to Everness channels. The first film is hosted on the official website news section and the official YouTube channel, and it has been re-shared by outlets including GameSpot, MSN, Yardbarker, and GamerBraves. There is no paywall, regional block, or subscription requirement, so anyone with a web browser can watch the full short in a few minutes.
Because the series is tied to the pre-launch marketing campaign, new entries tend to coincide with major beats on the road to release: closed tests, platform announcements, and the final countdown to April 29, 2026. Fans who want to follow the series should bookmark the official site's news hub and subscribe to the Hotta Studio YouTube channel. Voice work, music, and visual direction from the shorts are also good indicators of the quality players can expect from the game's in-engine cinematics, its soundtrack, and the work of its voice actors.
Tips
Watch Stories From Eibon before starting the main campaign. The shorts make the opening hours at Eibon Antique Shop easier to follow because the cast's personalities are already familiar.
Use the series as a casting guide. If a character's presence in the shorts lands for you, prioritize them in your gacha pulls once the game launches.
Pair the shorts with the individual character PV trailers for Mint, Sakiri, Jiuyuan, and others to get both the workplace-comedy side and the combat-showcase side of each Esper.
Keep an eye on the official news hub in the lead-up to April 29, 2026. New entries in the series tend to line up with test phases and platform reveals.
The mixed in-engine and animated segments highlight that not every cutscene in the game will look the same. Expect similar stylistic detours in the full story.