At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...
Direction
Mochizuki's restrained hand lets silence do the screaming.
Writing
Dialogue so natural you'll swear you said it once.
Score
Shigeru Nagata's piano aches in all the right places.
Director
Tomomi Mochizuki
Nobuo Tobita
Taku Morisaki (voice)
Toshihiko Seki
Yutaka Matsuno (voice)
Yuri Amano
Akiko Shimizu (voice)
Kae Araki
Yumi Kohama (voice)
Jun'ichi Kanemaru
Okada (voice)
Ai Satou
Taku's Mother (voice)
Aya Hisakawa
Young Girl (voice)
Tomokazu Seki
Minarai (voice)
Hikaru Midorikawa
Tadashi Yamao (voice)
Sumi Shimamoto
Rikako's Father's Lover (voice)
Reiko Suzuki
Mrs. Okami (voice)
Kinryu Arimoto
Rikako's Father (voice)
Takeshi Watabe
Principle (voice)
Ako Mayama
Additional Voices (voice)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made for TV with a shoestring budget and young staff—Ghibli's 'experiment' that embarrassed Miyazaki so much he rarely spoke of it.
The ambiguous final shot deliberately mirrors the opening: we're trapped in Taku's unreliable nostalgia, not truth.
JP
