General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Her Blue Sky (空の青さを知る人よ)

Her Blue Sky (空の青さを知る人よ, Sora no Aosa o Shiru Hito yo) is a 2019 Japanese animated feature film about two sisters in the mountain-ringed city of Chichibu whose lives are upended when the sister's former boyfriend appears twice at once: as his 31-year-old self returning home as a musician, and as his 18-year-old self who has crossed over from 13 years in the past. It was directed by Tatsuyuki Nagai, written by Mari Okada, and designed by Masayoshi Tanaka, the creative team known as Cho Heiwa Busters (超平和バスターズ), and it was produced by CloverWorks and distributed by Toho on October 11, 2019.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	October 11, 2019, Japan; 108 minutes; distributed by Toho¹^•³
Creative team	Director Tatsuyuki Nagai, screenplay Mari Okada, character design and chief animation direction Masayoshi Tanaka, music Masaru Yokoyama; original story credited to Cho Heiwa Busters¹
Setting	Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture, the third Cho Heiwa Busters work set there after Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (2011) and The Anthem of the Heart (2015)²
Premise	17-year-old high school student Aoi Aioi meets Shinno, the 18-year-old version of her sister Akane's ex-boyfriend Kanmuroi Shinnosuke, who has arrived from 13 years in the past while the present-day 31-year-old Shinnosuke also returns home⁴
Cast	Ryo Yoshizawa (Shinnosuke and Shinno, his first anime voice role), Riho Yoshioka (Akane), Shion Wakayama (Aoi), Ken Matsudaira, Ochiai Fukushi, Daichi Ochi, Atsumi Tanezaki⁵^•⁶
Theme song	Performed by Aimyon (unBORDE/Warner Music Japan)¹
Box office	About 166 million yen and roughly 126,000 admissions in the first four days, fourth place on the weekend ranking; total earnings of about 600 million yen⁷^•⁸
Recognition	Excellent Animation Work Award at the 43rd Japan Academy Prize (2020); jury recommendation work in the Animation division of the 23rd Japan Media Arts Festival⁹^•⁴

Spoilers

Story

Aoi Aioi is a 17-year-old second-year high school student who lost her parents as a child and lives with her older sister Akane. She spends her days absorbed in playing the bass rather than preparing for the career decisions ahead of her, and she carries a sense of guilt toward Akane, who gave up moving to Tokyo with her boyfriend in order to raise Aoi in her place.⁴^•¹⁰

The film's single supernatural device breaks this routine. Shinno, the 18-year-old Kanmuroi Shinnosuke as he was 13 years earlier, appears before Aoi, while at the same time the present-day Shinnosuke, now 31, comes back to town as a backup guitarist for a major singer, his music career having stalled far from stardom.⁴^•⁶ The story is framed by the proverb printed in the title's imagery, "the frog in the well knows nothing of the great ocean, and yet it knows the blueness of the sky," and the film is billed as a bittersweet, slightly mysterious "second first love" story connecting past and present.¹¹^•¹

Production and the Cho Heiwa Busters team

The film is the third collaboration of the team Cho Heiwa Busters: director Tatsuyuki Nagai, screenwriter Mari Okada, and character designer and chief animation director Masayoshi Tanaka. Their earlier works Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (2011) and The Anthem of the Heart (2015) were also set in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture, and the trio referred to the films as a trilogy; Nagai joked in interviews that calling it a trilogy made it easier to get made.²^•¹² Okada is from Chichibu herself, and Tanaka had in the meantime worked as character designer on Makoto Shinkai's Your Name. and Weathering with You.²

Nagai described the team's strength as the ability to tell a quiet story without theatrics: Okada draws the characters' feelings carefully and Tanaka's drawings carry conviction, so the film could stand on a single gimmick, Shinno's arrival from the past.² The theme of leaving one's hometown also grew out of the creators' own experience. The first draft was a story about leaving Chichibu and becoming independent, but the team concluded that the film should not treat the hometown only as a place to escape from, and the story expanded from there.²

The production staff included unit director Miyuki Kuroki, art director Takashi Nakamura, and sound director Jin Aketagawa, with animation by CloverWorks and production by Aniplex, Fuji Television, Toho, STORY, and KADOKAWA.¹^•¹³

Cast and voice performances

The film cast actors rather than professional voice performers in its three main roles. Ryo Yoshizawa, an actor known for live-action work including the Gintama film series and Kingdom, voiced both the 18-year-old Shinno and the 31-year-old Shinnosuke, his first role as an anime voice actor; he described building the character from a perspective entirely different from his usual acting.⁶ Riho Yoshioka voiced Akane and Shion Wakayama voiced Aoi, with Ken Matsudaira, Ochiai Fukushi, Daichi Ochi, and Atsumi Tanezaki in supporting roles.⁵

Reviewers singled out Yoshizawa's dual performance. Cinema Today's critics wrote that his separation of the 18-year-old's and the 31-year-old's voices was remarkable for a first attempt, and Filmarks users made the same point, one describing it as giving two different souls to the same person.¹⁴^•¹⁵

Reception and box office

In its first four days the film earned about 166 million yen from roughly 126,000 admissions and entered the weekend attendance ranking at fourth place, according to figures reported by the Kogyo Tsushinsha ranking.⁷ Its total box office came to about 600 million yen.⁸ For comparison, the team's previous film The Anthem of the Heart had earned 1.12 billion yen, and film critic Mahoko Hosono, writing before release, argued the new film's quality could support a doubling of that figure; the actual result fell well short of that projection.¹⁶

Critical response was generally favorable but not uniform. The two Cinema Today critics averaged 3.5 out of 5 stars, praising the scenery as at times indistinguishable from live action and Yoshizawa's dual role, while one found the Shinkai-style climax abrupt.¹⁴ On Eiga.com the film held a 3.8 average from 284 user reviews, with imagery words such as "poignant" and "tear-jerking" most frequently cited; on Filmarks it scored 6.8 from about 2,400 ratings.¹⁷^•¹⁰ The Japan Media Arts Festival, run by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, named it a jury recommendation work in the Animation division of its 23rd edition, and it received the Excellent Animation Work Award at the 43rd Japan Academy Prize in 2020.⁴^•⁹

Setting and legacy

The film's depiction of Chichibu, a mountain-ringed city about two hours northwest of Tokyo, continued the tourism effect the team's earlier works had produced there; Anohana had already turned the quiet city into an anime pilgrimage destination.¹⁸ Local reviews noted recognizable locations including Mount Buko, Hiyama Park, and Ogano town, and the production office issued a public request asking fans visiting filming locations to respect private property and behave with consideration for residents.¹⁹^•¹

The team reunited again for the 2024 original feature Fureru, which Nagai described as a new departure after Anohana, The Anthem of the Heart, and Her Blue Sky.²⁰ As of recent listings, the film streams on subscription services including Hulu, U-NEXT, and FOD in Japan, with rental and purchase available on Amazon Video.¹⁰

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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