Director: Naoko Yamada

Featured voices: Sayu Suzukawa, Akari Takaishi, Taisei Kido, Yui Aragaki

Films about putting bands together tend to be rambunctious affairs as they chronicle disparate misfits joining forces to make a joyous, cathartic racket. This Japanese animation is a more reflective, melancholy, but ultimately life-affirming, affair. Totsuko (Takashi) is a shy but sweetly upbeat girl at a strict Catholic school. In a lovely touch, Totsuko has a condition that means she can see people’s auras as colours, beautifully realised as abstract animation. The most striking aura belongs to the cool and aloof Kimi (Suzakawa). When Kimi disappears, Totsuko tracks her down to a local book shop where she is playing guitar. Kimi lets slip that she plays keyboards – although she doesn’t play really. Later, they meet Rhui (Kido), a lonely middle class boy who plays theremin and keyboards. Music loving Rhui is torn between the expectation of him honouring the family legacy and becoming a doctor, and his love of music. Encouraged by the kindly nun Sister Hiyoshiko (Aragaki), they form a band and prepare to play at a Christmas concert. In another subversion of genre norms, the religious Sister is a positive and encouraging figure, as opposed to joyless and censorious, although a third act revelation about her will come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. In the film’s most moving sequence, the trio are stranded overnight in a dorm due to heavy snow and share with each other their hopes, dreams and fears, while reflecting on Sister Hiyoshiko’s advice: ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ The songs, New Wave dance-pop a la New Order, elegantly reiterate the picture’s themes.