General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Drifting Home (雨を告げる漂流団地)

Drifting Home (雨を告げる漂流団地, Ame wo Tsugeru Hyōryū Danchi, literally "The Drifting Apartment Complex That Announces Rain") is a 2022 Japanese animated fantasy film directed by Hiroyasu Ishida and produced by Studio Colorido, in which a group of sixth-grade children become stranded on an apartment complex that drifts out to sea.¹ It premiered on September 16, 2022, as a Netflix worldwide exclusive and opened in Japanese theaters on the same day.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	September 16, 2022; Netflix worldwide exclusive streaming and Japanese theatrical release on the same day¹^•²
Director / screenplay	Hiroyasu Ishida; screenplay by Hayashi Mori and Ishida¹
Studio	Studio Colorido's third feature film, after Penguin Highway (2018) and A Whisker Away (2020)³
Runtime	120 minutes⁴
Music	Theme song and insert song performed by ZUTOMAYO¹
Main voice cast	Mutsumi Tamura (Kosuke), Asami Seto (Natsume), Daiki Yamashita, Yumiko Kobayashi, Inori Minase, Kana Hanazawa¹
Reception	Rotten Tomatoes 69% Tomatometer (16 reviews) and 80% Popcornmeter; Metacritic 59/100; IMDb 6.3/10⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Story

Kosuke Kumagai and Natsume Touchi are childhood friends who grew up like siblings in the same apartment complex, but their relationship became strained after the death of Kosuke's grandfather Yasuji, whom Natsume had loved like family.⁷ During summer vacation, Kosuke sneaks with classmates into the condemned building, rumored to be haunted, where he runs into Natsume and hears about a mysterious boy called Noppo.¹^•⁷ A strange phenomenon follows, and the children find the entire complex adrift on a vast, mysterious sea.¹

The film follows the group's survival on the drifting building, their fights and reconciliations, and their effort to return to their own world, in what Netflix's materials call "a summer farewell journey."¹ The seven children are Kosuke, Natsume, Noppo, Taishi, Shuri, Yuzuru, and Reina.⁸ Reviewers describe the story as a coming-of-age tale in which characters who cannot find their place in the present, and remain attached to happy memories of the past, part with that past and move toward the future.⁴

Production and the Netflix partnership

Studio deal. In April 2022, Netflix and Studio Colorido announced a partnership to co-produce three feature-length anime films, the first time Netflix signed a studio deal with a Japanese feature animation studio. Drifting Home was the first of the three, and a film directed by Tomotaka Shibayama, director of A Whisker Away, was slated for 2024.² The partnership followed the success of A Whisker Away, which reached the Top 10 most-watched films in over 30 countries after its 2020 Netflix premiere.² Netflix's Director of Japan Content, Yuji Yamano, said the deal would also explore theatrical releases alongside streaming premieres, with Drifting Home the first example of a same-day Netflix and theater premiere.²

Director. Hiroyasu Ishida was 33 at the time, making this his second feature film. His debut feature Penguin Highway (2018) won the Excellence Animation Award at the 42nd Japan Academy Prize and the Satoshi Kon Award for Best Animation at the Fantasia International Film Festival.⁷ The screenplay was written with Hayashi Mori, project production was by Twin Engine, and animation production by Studio Colorido.¹

The apartment complex as setting

The film's premise grew out of Ishida's interest in danchi, the large Japanese public housing complexes. In interviews he explained that early drafts had the children simply enter another world through the building, but as he revised the story the image of the complex itself floating on the sea took over, and he committed to it because, as he put it, he could say for certain that no other film had an apartment complex drifting on the ocean.⁹

The setting was modeled on Hibarigaoka danchi in Tokyo, one of the early large-scale housing estates, which had been demolished and rebuilt about ten years before the film. Ishida said he chose it partly because it was already gone, and that the film's background shows new high-rise buildings rising beside the demolished complex, reflecting the real scrap-and-build cycle of the site.¹⁰ The danchi supervisor on the production was Keita Terui, a specialist on apartment complexes whom Ishida consulted extensively about the setting.¹⁰ Ishida has said that for people who were born and raised in one, a danchi is a kind of homeland, and that the film asks how people who lived in such places regard a homeland that grows old and is torn down.¹¹

Music and cast

The theme song and insert song were performed by the band ZUTOMAYO.¹ The insert song "Natsugare" had a promotional video whose production drew on the finished film's footage to show the ocean waves and a fence that foreshadows what will happen to the children.¹² Mutsumi Tamura voiced Kosuke, Asami Seto voiced Natsume, and Ayumu Murase voiced Noppo, with Daiki Yamashita, Yumiko Kobayashi, Inori Minase, and Kana Hanazawa in the remaining main roles.¹^•⁵

Reception

Critical response was divided. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 69% Tomatometer from 16 reviews and an 80% Popcornmeter audience score; Metacritic lists 59/100, and IMDb 6.3/10.⁵^•⁶ On the Japanese service Filmarks it averages 3.1 out of 5 from about 16,600 reviews, and on Eiga.com 2.9 out of 5 from 154 reviews.¹³

Praise concentrated on the premise and the visuals. The Daily Telegraph's Robbie Collin gave four stars, calling the film strange and beautiful and like the product of a child's imagination; Polygon's Kambole Campbell wrote that two hours in a single location against a minimal background does not feel like overkill; the Los Angeles Times' Noel Murray read the surreal predicament as an offshoot of the children's fears about growing up.⁵ Criticism centered on pacing and repetition: a New York Times review criticized the slow tempo and the repeated falls of the children, while Japanese reviewers noted that the cycle of falling, rescuing, and near-miss rescues continues through the film and tires some viewers.¹³ RogerEbert.com's review noted that manga readers may find the central premise reminiscent of Kazuo Umezu's horror comic The Drifting Classroom.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Animated and short films › Japanese anime features › Released 2014 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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