This one exists to bear witness to something most people have completely forgotten. A single episode about families torn from their homes at the end of WWII, animated with the care usually reserved for prestige projects, turning historical testimony into something that breaks you quietly instead of loudly. The bird in the title carries the weight of all those voices across water to a shore they never reached again.

Etopirika: Omoi wo Tsumugu Tori is a single-episode drama with supernatural elements, built from the accounts of people who once lived on the islands of the Northern Territories. It centers on what happened there as the war ended and on the hardship of islanders driven from their homes. The film was made so that more people, young viewers above all, would learn this history, and to build support for the territories' return.