A fox hands a boy a seed. The house it grows swallows him whole, and somehow that feels like the safest thing that could happen. Two and a half minutes of animation so deliberate, so perfectly colored, that it answers questions about home and belonging you didn't know you were asking.

A fox hands a young boy a seed the color of the sky, and once he plants it, it grows into a huge house that fills up with animals. The one-episode special began as a short television spot for Nippon TV's 40th anniversary. It adapts a 1964 Japanese picture book written by Rieko Nakagawa and illustrated by Yuriko Oomura, and it was later included on a 2005 Ghibli collection DVD of short works.