Anpanman doesn't ask you to feel anything complicated. A hero made of bread fights hunger and despair with his own body as the cure, and that's the entire moral universe, clean, direct, infinitely kind. The movie holds that simplicity without ever becoming saccharine or thin. You watch a character whose job is to literally feed people, to become part of them, and somehow that's both the silliest and most generous thing a superhero can do. There's no irony, no winking. Just a man-shaped pastry showing up again and again because someone needs him. That consistency, that refusal to get darker or smarter, is what makes it work.

Sore Ike! Anpanman: Bokura wa Hero is a 1997 comedy and fantasy movie from TMS Entertainment.