Japanese animator and painter Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, known for his work as an art director on Your Name and In This Corner of the World, makes his directorial feature debut at this year’s Berlinale, in the main competition, with A New Dawn [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], an animated drama that attempts to mix family mystery, environmental themes and adolescent turmoil. Set around a soon-to-be-demolished firework factory, the pic is supposed to follow Keitaro (Riku Hagiwara), who is obsessed with recreating the mythical Shuhari firework envisioned by his missing father (Takashi Okabe), while childhood friendships fracture under the pressures of change and loss.

The main problem lies in the confusing development and unfolding of the plot. Relationships between the leading characters remain unclear throughout, never fully grounded emotionally, and the unveiling of the Shuhari mystery ends up seeming muddled. Even at 76 minutes, the narrative becomes strangely tiring to follow, as motivations shift abruptly and crucial connections are left implicit or unexplained. Viewers struggle to empathise because the story never quite settles into a coherent emotional arc.

Performances – delivered through vocal acting and exaggerated animation – are also pitched far too high. Characters constantly yell and scream, visually and vocally, pushing past even the playful excesses of Japanese anime into a realm that feels overwrought. This tone spills over into the writing: irrationality is amplified to such an extent that it becomes difficult to understand why several characters engage in self-destructive or destructive behaviour. Emotional extremes therefore replace psychological nuance.

Yet what does work is the atmosphere. Shinomiya crafts an ethereal, sometimes fascinating visual world, particularly in scenes involving fireworks and nocturnal landscapes, while daytime sequences are marked by washed-out tones – especially blues, greens and browns – that reinforce the film’s melancholic mood and sense of decay. Meanwhile, Shuta Hasunuma’s score often aligns with this mood, adding a fragile, melancholic texture, even if it ultimately cannot save the movie from its shortcomings. Technically, the picture is polished and carefully assembled, although the stop-motion additions look rather casual and the character design feels plain and traditional, with faces recalling countless anime protagonists seen before – that of Sentarō Tatewaki (Miyu Irino) is a prime example. The film’s aesthetic ambition suggests arthouse aspirations, but these sit uneasily beside the conventional language of TV anime, leaving the target audience unclear.

The environmental subtheme – hinted at through the factory’s closure and the encroaching road project – remains largely background noise until a late-stage aftermath that tries to bring everything together. By then, the emotional stakes feel distant. Although the movie gestures towards climate change and urban sprawl, its storytelling never quite incorporates these concerns into the narrative core.

A New Dawn ultimately feels like a product suspended between various registers: part art-film meditation, part mainstream anime melodrama, part ecological allegory. The result is visually intriguing but narratively elusive. Its visions linger, yet the story proves hard to recount afterwards – a puzzling experience that leaves some admiration for the craft, but little lasting emotional clarity.

A New Dawn was produced by Japan’s Asmik Ace and France’s Miyu Productions. Charades is selling the movie worldwide.