Nobody talks about this one. It's a 1994 adaptation of Miyazawa Kenji that moves like a watercolor painting, all quiet snow and moral weight, telling a story about kindness in a world designed to punish it. The runtime is short enough that you forget it's even there, then you think about it for days. This is what happens when a real artist gets a single frame to work with and chooses not to waste it.

Shirou and his younger sister Kanko head out one winter day to play in the fields, where they run into a fox cub called Konzaburou. Foxes are known in folklore as tricksters, so the siblings are wary of him at first. They soon become friends, and they take up his invitation to an evening show that the foxes put on in the forest, a visit that could change how they see foxes. The film is a short fantasy adapted from a story by Miyazawa Kenji. It asks whether foxes really deserve their sly reputation or whether people have simply pinned it on them.