This one shrinks your whole world down to the walk home from school, and somehow that feels like enough. A dog you stop to pet because you always stop to pet it. A weird guy in the neighborhood who is just part of the scenery, the way weird guys always are when you are a kid. Doorbells rung and legs pumping before anyone answers, which is the purest crime there is. It comes out of Geidai Animation, so it moves like a student film in the best sense: no plot machinery, no lesson, just an animator remembering a town and drawing it until you remember yours too. Nothing bad happens. Nothing needs to. You will finish it and think about a specific dog on a specific street, and that is the whole trick.

Life in one particular town comes down to a few familiar things. There is a dog the kids like to pet as they walk home from school, an eccentric man they know around the neighborhood, and the doorbells they ring as a prank. Bero Bero is a slice of life film that takes in the ordinary rhythm of that town and the everyday routines of the children who live there.