Miyazawa takes a kid watching his world collapse and makes you feel every inch of that helplessness without a single wasted moment. Gusuko doesn't get to be a hero, doesn't discover some secret power, doesn't even get to save what matters most. He just keeps moving forward into a life that demands everything from him, and you watch him become who he has to be, not who he wanted to be.

Budori is a young boy living in the countryside with his parents and little sister. A series of droughts and other natural disasters breaks the family apart, and he must leave home and make his own way in the world. Wanting to improve life for the poor people of his land, he eventually joins the Iihatov Volcano Department, a group of scientists. There he works on scientific projects meant to combat the kind of disasters that drove him from home. The drama film adapts a novella by Kenji Miyazawa and received several awards, among them the Monbusho Selection.