Neverness to Everness Accused of Stealing Anime Art

A viral side-by-side comparison showing what looks like an AI-processed copy of a scene from Weathering With You used as in-game art in Neverness to Everness has hit 1.5 million views — and the studio now has a credibility problem that's hard to walk back. The studio's executive director had publicly committed that core assets and character portraits would "never touch AI," per TheGamer's reporting — making the side-by-side a direct contradiction of stated policy. The NTE poster and the Makoto Shinkai film frame are nearly identical in composition, with the game version appearing to have been run through a style-transfer filter and dropped into the product. This isn't a vague AI-aesthetics complaint — the visual match is specific enough that it's difficult to explain as coincidence or loose reference. For a gacha title where artwork is literally what players are spending money on, having in-game assets traced back to an animated film via an AI pipeline is a monetization ethics issue, not just a PR one. Anime creators and game artists have been raising this exact concern for years, and NTE just handed critics the clearest example yet.