The wonder here isn't about discovering life on Mars, it's about grown men still believing they're young enough to chase something impossible. The animation breathes with the kind of patient beauty that lets you sit in a moment without rushing past it, and every frame treats these dreamers like they matter. This is a show that knows the real magic is five old friends in a handmade ship, arguing about science and believing anyway.

Five decades after it first formed, the Scientific Boys Club sets out to build a ship that can reach Mars. The plan rests on a thesis by the wife of one member, which holds that space is filled with a flowing ethereal energy that a vessel could ride. The club hopes to prove an old idea that Martians dug the channels on the planet's surface, but they find no life there. Many years later, after both theories have been written off as nonsense, a Mars expedition turns up a stone inscribed with the club's name and the year 1954. The OVA also includes short stories set in the small town of Bristol, including one in which the town's Miss China is shrunk to the size of a pea. It mixes comedy, drama, fantasy and science fiction.