Non Non Biyori: Vacation

Asahigaoka is a very small village in rural Japan whose school has five pupils and one teacher. Toward the end of the summer holidays one of the villagers wins a free trip to Okinawa, and the entire school, plus the owner of the local sweet shop, sets off together. Over three days there is the sea, kayaking, people newly met, and Hotaru, who came from the city, being somewhere else for the first time with her village friends. The Non Non Biyori series is among the best-known examples of the strand of anime that builds no plot and works on calm. This film is in the same mould: no crisis, no villain, no lesson to be learned. For seventy-one minutes what you watch is simply a holiday passing. The source is Atto's manga. Anyone who does not know the series will find the bonds between the characters underdrawn, though the point of the film was never to narrate but to sustain a feeling.