movie review: A New Dawn (2026)

For the second day of Golden Week, I went to see "A New Dawn" at Cinemalice in Jinbocho. This is an animated movie directed by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya. Shinomiya is a nihonga artist1 and worked under Makoto Shinkai; A New Dawn is his directional debut for a feature-length film. *This is a spoiler-free review. I won't give away the ending or specific plot details, but I will talk about the broader strokes of the plot, so be warned. SynopsisThe film centers around Sentarō, Keitarō, and Kaoru, three children who grew up in a family that has run a traditional fireworks business for multiple centuries. However, the end is near: Business isn't going well, and their house is scheduled to be demolished for a re-development project. The movie shows how the characters deal with this inevitable fate, centering around a mysterious type of firework called the shuhari that their father left unfinished before he disappeared. The visualsA New Dawn is an absolutely gorgeous movie. You can clearly tell…