Up in Heaven, Yuki’s grandparents decide that, having turned thirteen years old, she must go down to Earth to a village that is torn by bandits and intervene to save its people. However if she does not succeed within one year she will become as insubstantial as the wind. Down in the village, Yuki is befriended by a group of orphans whose parents have all been killed by the bandits and who now subsist by begging. Yuki amazes them by taming the wild horse Blizzard. She is instrumental in getting the orphans and farmers to stand up to first the warring bandits and then Goemon, the greedy lord that owns the region. But Yuki must face her greatest challenge yet when the displeased Demon God that lives in the volcano emerges to destroy those who live beneath.
Direction
Tadashi Imai's final film—Marxist samurai cinema legend goes animated.
Production
Hand-painted backgrounds that make poverty look weirdly gorgeous.
Writing
Orphans organizing tenant farmers: anime's most underrated labor arc.
Director
Tadashi Imai
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Imai was a communist filmmaker blacklisted during WWII; Yuki adapts a French novel but smuggles in his lifetime obsession with oppressed villagers rising up.
The 'insubstantial as wind' deadline was invented for the film—the original novel's Yuki faces no such ticking clock, making this pure Imai anxiety.
JP
