Kase-san and Morning Glories (2018)
Based on the manga series by Hiromi Takashima, which began serialisation in 2013, Kase-san and Morning Glories is a short-form anime OVA (original video animation) released in 2018 by studio ZEXCS. At just 58 minutes, it sits somewhere between a feature film and an extended episode, a format that suits the source material's quiet, episodic rhythm well enough, though it also places certain pressures on how much narrative ground it can cover. The manga had already developed a devoted following in Japan before the adaptation arrived, and the OVA was produced partly in response to a crowdfunding campaign supported by that fanbase, which gives it the character of a passion project rather than a straightforward commercial release. It is the sort of thing that gets made because people genuinely love it, and that feeling comes through in the finished work.
Director Takuya Sato, who also wrote the screenplay adaptation, is probably best known for the slice-of-life series Strawberry Marshmallow and the romantic drama Switch Girl!!. He has a consistent interest in the small emotional textures of everyday life, particularly as experienced by young women, and that sensibility fits the material here like a glove. The story concerns Yamada, a shy and somewhat accident-prone girl whose great love is tending the school's flower gardens, and Kase-san, an energetic and popular track athlete. The two are drawn together despite, or perhaps because of, how different they seem on the surface, and the film follows the early stages of their relationship with a measured, unhurried attention that suits its modest running time.
The principal voice cast is a polished one by any measure. Ayane Sakura voices Yamada, bringing a quality of hesitant warmth that makes her character's inner life feel legible without ever overplaying it. Minami Takahashi takes the role of Kase-san, and together the two leads create a chemistry that carries considerable weight given how little time the film has to establish it. Supporting performances from Yumi Uchiyama, Minako Kotobuki, and Ibuki Kido round out the cast comfortably, though the film never loses focus on its two central figures. For a companion piece in Japanese animation that handles delicate emotion with similar restraint, see also Hotarubi no Mori e (2011), and I also covered From Up on Poppy Hill (2011), another anime built around quiet, considered feeling rather than dramatic spectacle.
Cinematographer Takeshi Kuchiba and editor Masahiro Goto between them give the film a look and a pace that are carefully, consciously soft. The visual palette leans warm and slightly diffuse, with backgrounds full of botanical detail, petals and morning light and the particular green of a school garden in summer. The animation style has a hand-drawn gentleness to it, favouring intimate framings and small gestures over anything showy. Goto's editing keeps things unhurried, letting scenes breathe, which is a deliberate choice in a work this short, and one that reflects confidence in the material's quieter register. The composer for the film is uncredited, but the score and soundtrack are a significant part of how the film communicates, leaning into a warmth that fills the gaps where the script keeps things spare. Sound design, too, is notably fine-grained throughout, built from small, specific, domestic textures rather than anything cinematic in the conventional sense. If you are interested in how animation can carry emotional freight through craft rather than plot, I also wrote about Kamikaze Girls (2004), which takes a very different approach to the girl-friendship genre but shares something of the same conviction that style is substance.
Everything about Kase-san and Morning Glories is lovely except, perhaps, the one thing a film is usually built on: its story. That is not to say the story is bad, just slight. It is a gentle coming-of-age romance between two Japanese teenage girls, one of them discovering her feelings as she goes, and it follows the familiar, tender beats of first love without straying far from them. On that level it is sweet, if unremarkable.
What lifts it well above the ordinary is the craft, and it begins with how it looks. The artwork is gorgeous and the animation is beautiful, soft and warm and full of small, observed detail, the kind of hand-made loveliness that makes even an ordinary moment between two people feel worth lingering on.
Better still, for me, is the sound. The voice acting is excellent, and the sound design is extraordinary in its attention to the tiny things, right down to the faint crease of the bedding as the two of them shift where they are sitting. It is the sort of intimate, almost tactile detail that pulls you right into a scene. And the soundtrack is glorious, carrying the emotion where the slender script cannot quite reach.
All of which leaves me wishing, more than anything, that it had a deeper story to match its exquisite making. Give this level of artistry something weightier to work with and it could have been something special; as it is, the craft is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting for a tale this slight. Three and a half stars. Beautiful to look at and even better to listen to, a delicate and heartfelt thing, if only there were a bit more underneath it.
Kase-san and Morning Glories is a film that will find its audience and hold them, even as it leaves them wanting more of precisely what it offers. It is a work of real craft in service of a story that, at 58 minutes and with source material it can only partially adapt, never quite has the room to fully breathe. For fans of the manga it will feel like a loving, if brief, reunion. For newcomers it offers something polished but unremarkable in its bones, elevated by the care taken at every level of production. There is a particular kind of melancholy in watching something made this well and wishing it had more to say. It is beautiful, and it knows it, and that is both its charm and its limitation.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2026-11-03
