When Shoma finally gets a reply to the messages he sent to his childhood friend Atshushi, who moved away three and a half years ago, Atshushi invites him to a festival deep in the mountains of inner Japan. Slightly miffed at him for being out of touch for so long, Shoma still agrees to come. But when he gets to the mountain the festival is supposed to be held, Atshushi isn’t there. Instead he manages to fall off the mountain and is rescued by Shiori, a girl his age who seems deeply involved with the seven day Tanabata festival Atshushi wanted to meet him at. What’s really going on?
A childhood friend who never replies to your messages for years and suddenly, mysteriously gets back in contact with you after having moved away, huh? If you watched enough anime you know something is wrong here. More so when it turns out Shiori is also waiting for somebody she hasn’t seen for a long time who promised to be at this festival. Tanabata you may know is the day per year that the star crossed lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi may meet again, the rest of the year being separated by the Milky Way. As this day falls in summer, it’s a good excuse to hold a festival and you often see it referenced in romance anime. The festival here is stranger though: seven days long and it involves all the participants wearing a computer motion capture suit of some sort, that gives them skills that they need to set up everything needed for the festival. As for what the festival is for, Shiori tells Shoma that it is to provide a miracle at the end of the festival, the chance to meet the one person you would most like to see. To achieve this miracle, the festival will recreate the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi, with Shiori and Shoma in the main roles.
It all sounds vaguely cultish, but it turns out this entire thing is run by an AI created to enable people to meet loved ones they lost, by providing a virtual representation of them using their life data. This turns out to be not entirely risk free, as the AI has become so good at this it can also create crude copies of people based on historical texts. And because the festival of course takes place at an abandoned castle filled with the ‘ghosts’ of the samurai that were betrayed there, these rise up as monsters Shoma and Shiori needs to defeat before the festival’s miracle can take place. But they succeed and the miracle does take place. A reunion with the dead at the festival for reunions, and wouldn’t it be lovely if it could happen in real life? Seeing your loved one for one last time, to be able to properly say goodbye to them? A miracle created with modern technology, but steeped in age old traditions.
I’m always a sucker for this sort of story of grief and coming to terms with your losses and this was a very well told one. The animation, set and character design were great and it never felt manipulative. It remains a slightly strange production though, an original one hour anime movie released on Youtube in August 2018. Not tied to any larger project or franchise I could find, leaves me wondering what the purpose of this was. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter of course and I should be just glad this exists.
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