A letter to Momo

It's been 11 years but we finally have a new film by the director of "Jin-Roh" Hiroyuki Okiura

This is what is going on since this trailer is unsubbed or dubbed:

"Momo is a shy and imaginative 13-year-old girl who is suffering because of her father's recent death and the resultant extreme changes in her life. From the big city of Tokyo, Momo's family moves to her mother's childhood home, a remote island named Shio. Momo does not adapt well to her new surroundings. Her father left her an unfinished letter containing only two words, "Dear Momo". As she tries to make sense of these two words and guess what her father was trying to tell her, some strange incidents occur on the island, which is otherwise tranquil. People's orchards are ransacked by an unknown person, and some of their prized belongings start to go missing. Momo also starts to hear strange sounds coming from the attic in her house


Momo's mother refuses to believe Momo about the strange sounds from the attic, so Momo herself embarks on an adventure to discover the source of these disturbances. During her investigations, Momo meets up with Kawa, Mame and leader Iwa, a group of imps, each of which have a different personality. In addition, Momo discovers that the mysterious two-word letter from her father is connected to all the strange occurrences, and to her arrival at Shio"


Hiroyuki Okiura is an animator turned director. He's mostly know for his realistic style of animation. One of his most notable animations was that amazing crowd scene at the start of Akira (from shooting of the agent to beer can crashing after Takashi's scream). Crowd scenes in animation are the toughest shots to animate and this is probably one of the best.

Here's a fan made showreel of his work (some NSFW "Ghost in the shell" scenes)

Jin-Roh the Wolf Brigade was his directorial debut film

This newer film Letter to Momo seems a bit lighter than than Jin-Roh and it has been in development for 7 years. I'm pretty interested in seeing this one

Oh fun fact, when my chrome auto translates the Japanese title it translates it as "Letter to the thigh". Always makes me giggle

You can find the official website here

The plot is from wikipedia and the tiny bit of info about his animations is from Anipages