Drifting Home doubles down on Penguin Highway’s fantasy and friction
As a child, moving to a new home can feel less like an adventure than like facing the destruction of the known world. That apocalyptic feeling should seem overly dramatic in hindsight, but Penguin Highway director Hiroyasu Ishida takes it seriously and gives it a startlingly literal face in his second anime feature, Drifting Home, now streaming on Netflix. Drifting Home’s elementary schooler protagonists Kosuke and Natsume are coming to terms with the loss of their former apartment building, when it suddenly heads out toward the middle of the ocean with them and their friends aboard.
In a neighborhood on the verge of renewal, with old housing complexes slowly being replaced by new water towers and industrial buildings, the Kamonomiya apartment complex is a remnant of 1960s postwar growth. Kosuke and Natsume used to live in these “haunted apartments,” now scheduled for demolition, and reportedly occupied only by ghosts. From the start, the slow disappearance of their home is plainly symbolic of a friendship threatened by change and time. The two have drifted apart, due to an exchange of ill-chosen words compounded by diverging interests and priorities.
A beautiful but simple opening sequence retraces the friendship they used to have, walking the area backward in time to when the neighborhood was full of life. The scaffolding, mold, rust, and weathering gently disappear as the shots shift toward the past. After a quick setup at school, Kosuke and some friends journey to look at the old flats in search of the ghost that supposedly haunts it. Instead, they run across Natsume and her strange new friend Noppo, who claims to be a former resident.
Before long, a sudden downpour of rain separates them from the real world, and
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