A satellite comes home after seven years in space, and the movie treats its return like a resurrection. The entire thing is told from the probe's perspective, which means you spend ninety minutes watching something that cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel, genuinely fighting to survive. It sounds like a gimmick until you realize the filmmakers have made you care about an object the way you care about a person. This is not a documentary dressed up in animation. This is a love letter to human persistence, told through the eyes of a machine that has no reason to care whether it lives or dies. The technical sequences are pristine enough to convince you that you're watching real footage. By the ending, you're not rooting for a probe to land safely. You're rooting for something that taught you what it means to keep going.

HAYABUSA: BACK TO THE EARTH - Kikan is a 2011 CG anime film that follows the Hayabusa satellite as it makes its long voyage home to Earth. The single feature tells its story through computer-generated animation and keeps the spacecraft and its return trip at the center of the narrative.