The Anthem of the Heart

Jun, a child who talks constantly, sees her father leaving a hotel with another woman and goes home and tells her mother what she saw. Her parents separate. Jun comes to believe that a talking egg has taken her voice as punishment, and for years she cannot speak. The film is not interested in the source of the trauma. It is interested in the shape of the compensation: she cannot speak but she can sing, because guilt forbids speech and does not forbid song. The school musical is therefore not a backdrop, it is the film itself. The form asks a hard question about when words heal anything. Nobody is entirely forgiven by the end, and none of the four teenagers gets what they wanted. Tatsuyuki Nagai directed, Mari Okada wrote it, A-1 Pictures produced. The same team had made Anohana and Toradora and works together under the name Super Peace Busters. It opened in Japan on 19 September 2015. Inori Minase, Koki Uchiyama and Sora Amamiya lead the voice cast. Who it is for: viewers who like school drama and anime built around music, and anyone who took to Anohana. Who it is not for: those who will find the fairy-tale frame too much. The egg is deliberately childish, and the film takes it seriously to the end.