It disarms you in under two minutes, which is exactly the kind of ambush Minna no Uta has been running on Japanese kids and the adults who never got over it for decades. The whole thing is one creature, one plant, and the patience to keep watering something that hasn't done anything for you yet. Then the tree grows, the seasons turn, and it starts feeding everyone in reach before circling back to the one who started it. Ann Sally's vocal is the load-bearing wall here, warm and unhurried, doing the emotional work that a longer show would need twelve episodes and a flashback to earn. Made for the NHK Heart Exhibition, and it wears that gentleness with zero irony, no twist, no darkness waiting in the third act. People sleep on it because it's a song slot, not a series. Their loss. Keep it bookmarked for the nights nothing else will go down easy.

A creature looks after a plant, and the plant repays that care in surprising and marvelous ways. Through the changing seasons the tree keeps growing, supporting those around it, until its story comes back around to the one who tended it. This short fantasy music piece was made for NHK's Minna no Uta, set to a song by Ann Sally for the NHK Heart Exhibition.