A narrator's voice carries you through a storybook come to life, each frame a watercolor holding still until animation breathes into it. Kenji Miyazawa's gentleness fills the quiet spaces between words and movement. This is not spectacle, not urgency, not anything that demands to be watched, only something that deserves to be.

A short drama OVA from 1988 retells Kenji's story of the acorns and the wildcat in the style of a picture book. Instead of acting the tale out as a drama, a narrator reads it aloud while a series of warm illustrations plays across the screen, each given life by small, restrained touches of motion. The minimalist animation comes from Yasuhiro Nagura, who served as animation director on Mamoru Oshii's 1986 film Angel's Egg, and a spacey score accompanies the images. Kenji's wildcat is reported to have inspired Miyazaki's Totoro. The storybook approach lets the author's language and narrative voice carry the whole film.