The story centers around Shinko, an elementary school girl on a rural town who likes to daydream about what her town was 1000 years ago, while imaginarily establishing a friendship with a girl from the royalty of classical japan, both of them longing for friendship. One day a shy new student, Kiiko, is transferred from Tokyo to Shinko’s class, soon becoming friends and eventually sharing Shinko’s dream.
The film nails perfectly all the points of a good slice of life: the beauty of everyday things, childhood, friendship, and dreams. All of this with the background of a rural town in post-war Japan, there is a great appreciation of the countryside, complemented by the gorgeous art. Though not a very deep film, this is not a kid’s movie, as it also deals with somewhat more mature themes like death, unrequited love, separation and growing up.
The music is hit and miss, the orchestral pieces are great, there’s also a great piano track which sadly plays only twice, I believe, but there’s some (humming?) tracks that plays consistently during the whole movie which I really didn’t like, sounded pretty crappy and brought down some scenes.
As mentioned above, the art is really beautiful and has a touch of its own. The sceneries are colored beautifully; the characters are all really well drawn and very distinct between each other. There are a few observations, though: the blushing of people sometimes seemed like they were dirty instead of blushing. Also there was a few times where it seemed like the lip-synching (if you can call it that) was a bit off, and other where someone was crying but the weird angle showed didn’t really reflect this.
The voice acting is great, thankfully in these kinds of movies you get voices that aren’t the generic and derivative voices that you get in most anime shows. One thing that bothered me a bit is that Shinko’s voice sometimes comes off a bit too old for her age.
All in all, it’s a really relaxing and pretty film to enjoy, it doesn’t have the level of polish of Ghibli films but it comes close. The story is nothing especial but it takes a step back to the characters and creates situation to develop them. Highly recommended.
