Adapting a short story by Kenji Miyazawa, Rintaro brings his A game, even though a modest and unassuming project. The presentation is dreamlike with impressionistic backgrounds, flat, solid coloring without outlines, and simplistic 80’s synth music. It has a nostalgic feel, not simply for being an old, unpopular OVA, but as the story was published in the 30’s, having a hazy feel and storybook-like visuals were fitting. I personally loved the drama Rintaro created with the use of long takes and flat compositions, there’s a lot of stillness to the animation too. The children voice acting felt authentic. For the story, the transfer student comingto a rural location is a curious thing. While it might seem like this rural location is subject to this foreigner like boy who can read Japanese and speaks the language without a dialect and to his ambiguously existing magic powers, as well as to his father with his mining company, symbolizing modernizing forces, the anime cleverly subverts this notion of progress by not just by pulling all focus from metropolitan life and the world of adults, but by the children whose horizons are limited not by these things, whose rooted life allows them to shape the organic world, and it is here that Rintaro’s impressionism and expressionism are most fitting. Without showing anything hideous, a new idea of center and of development are imagined.