Two girls meet by accident. One thinks the other might be a ghost. That impossibility, that willingness to believe in something that doesn't make sense, becomes the whole point of how they become friends. The rotoscope animation dissolves the boundary between real and drawn until you stop noticing the difference, and by then you're inside their quietness, their small observations, their refusal to explain everything away. Iwai doesn't let you solve this story. He lets you live inside it.

Tetsuko Arisugawa, known as Alice, moves into a new house with her recently divorced mother and starts at a new school. There she hears an odd rumor: the boy who used to sit at her desk, nicknamed Judas, has disappeared and may have been poisoned by one of his four wives. While putting up with her mother's meddling and bullying from classmates, Alice starts looking into the story. The clues lead to the house next door, where Hana Arai, an eccentric girl who seldom goes outside, lives. After an awkward first meeting, Hana agrees to help and comes up with a plan, and the pair set off to find out what became of Judas, with a friendship possibly taking shape along the way. The animated film serves as a prequel to Iwai's 2004 live-action Hana & Alice, showing how its two leads first met, and mixes mystery, drama and slice of life.