NEW GAME! (2016)

It's been a year since Aoba joined Eagle Jump, so she's looking forward to being a senpai this year ... Umiko makes a proposal for Shizuku.

The character design competition gets announced at their flower viewing. Just like Ko’s designs for “Fairies’ Stories” was chosen right after she had joined the company after graduating high school, everyone has a chance to enter. Aoba reads the proposal that Shizuku and the other members of the design team comes up with, and ends up going through a lot of trial and error. Aoba can’t seem to get the designs just right. She goes to visit Ko and sees that she has already completed numerous sketches that are all high quality and Aoba is amazed. Aoba uses her feelings of frustration from this to try to motivate her and enters the character design competition.

Aoba’s dream of becoming a character designer comes true, though she has to touch up on the designs with Ko, and has to get everything finalized by Ko. Aoba sees that her designs that won at the character design competition had already been made into 3D by Hifumi, and she tells Hifumi to ask her if she has any questions about the designs. Ko warns Aoba to hurry up and keep working on the designs, but when she sees her senpais discussing something about 3D, she is unable to voice her own opinions. Aoba then starts wondering if it’s actually okay for her to be character designer...

"Moon Ranger" started off as a girls' anime series, but because of its high quality, it was highly regarded by adults and was made into theatrical releases as well as live shows. After it's two and a half year run, the protagonist in the "Moon Ranger" series was going to change. And because of that, a final live show was going to take place. Hajime, a huge "Moon Ranger" fan, wants to do anything possible to get her hands on the tickets and tries to get into the ticket site, but...

Hifumi is now the character team leader and uses all of her courage to ask Aoba and Yun about their progress on their 3D models. Both Aoba and Yun are used to Kou being the leader, and end up lying about their deadlines. However, Hifumi doesn't seem to suspect anything from their deadlines, which makes Aoba panic and tell her the truth. Meanwhile, Yun knew she wouldn't make it in time, but ended up telling Hifumi she would, ends up being even later than she thought. This makes her stress, wondering if Hifumi would become depressed once she tells her...

Things are going well for Aoba and her job as the character designer, as her desk piles up with a ton of prints that need to be checked or redone. Seeing the giant pile of papers on her desk, Aoba can't help but smile, as it confirms the fact that she is actually doing her dream job. Yun and Hajime start talking about the key visuals for the game that'll appear in gaming magazines, and Kou tells Aoba that as the character designer, she'd be in charge of doing those as well. After realizing that, Aoba starts to get nervous, but...

Aoba is asked by Umiko to sit in on an interview for a new programmer. Aoba asks Umiko if it's really okay for her to sit in on this interview, since she knows nothing about programming, but Umiko tells her that the skills of the programmer had already been acknowledged and that she'd just like her to watch how she behaves. Aoba still doesn't fully grasp the situation, when there's a knock on the door as it slowly opens. The person on the other side happens to be someone that Aoba is rather familiar with...

As Aoba, Hajime, and Yun struggle with picking out a restaurant for the new hires' welcoming party, Shizuku has them practice being maids in a maid café for no real purpose. Once a restaurant is eventually picked and the party gets underway, Nene and Tsubame get to know each other while the character team try to get Momiji to loosen up around them. Later, Hifumi tries to help Momiji, who has been eating lunch by herself, open up more, encouraging her to spend more time with the rest of the team.

While accompanying Yun and her siblings to a hero show, Hajime comes across one of her high school friends, Akki, but is too ashamed to tell her that she works in video games. Hearing that Hajime always hid her otaku hobbies from her friends, Yun shows her that she used to be a geek herself during school, changing her image once she came to Tokyo. As Nene and Tsubame are tasked with programming some mini-games, Tsubame explains how she got into programming out of wanting to make a game together with Momiji. Upon hearing that Nene just took up programming on a whim ...

Tsubame is tasked with programming a 'red light green light' style mini-game designed to Hajime's specifications. However, every time Tsubame thinks her job is done, other staff members bring up issues with the mini-game, leading Hajime to make further changes to the design document. These delays lead Hajime to feel guilty after Tsubame voices her concerns over how it might affect her evaluation. After hearing from Umiko about how the situation is tough on Hajime as well, Tsubame finally manages to complete a satisfactory revision of the mini-game.

Running into Ko and Momiji at the cafeteria, Nene learns from Momiji that Tsubame is going against her parents' wishes and will have to take over her family's inn if she fails to get into Eagle Jump. Nene then explains how Hotaru helped give Aoba the motivation to apply for her job. Just then, the programming team discovers that Tsubame's code is full of bugs, as she prioritised speed over checking it thoroughly.

At a promotional event for Peco, Ko tells Rin that she is going to France for a few years to develop a game at another company and build upon her experience, while Momiji hears from Hifumi about how Ko was picked over Aoba for the key visuals. While giving an interview on her work on the game, Ko brings Aoba up on stage to properly acknowledge her for her character designs