The Case of Hana & Alice

Tetsuko Arisugawa, nicknamed Alice, moves with her mother to a small town after her parents separate and enrolls at Ishinomori Middle School. Her classmates mostly ignore her, and she learns that the desk she has been given belonged to a student named Judas, who is said to have been murdered a year earlier. The only person thought to know anything about what happened is Hana Arai, the girl next door, who has stopped attending school and watches the neighbourhood from her window. Alice begins looking into the case and eventually approaches Hana, and the two become friends as they try to work out who Judas was and what became of him.

The Case of Hana & Alice is a Japanese animated mystery directed by Shunji Iwai, who also wrote the screenplay. It was his eleventh film as director, following Vampire and preceding A Bride for Rip Van Winkle. Production was handled by Production I.G, CoMix Wave Films and Steve N'Steven, with Tomohiko Ishii, Iwai and Seiji Okuda producing. Yu Aoi voices Alice and Anne Suzuki voices Hana, heading a credited cast of forty-nine that also includes Ryo Katsuji, Haru Kuroki, Tae Kimura and Sei Hiraizumi.

The film runs 98 minutes. On TMDB it holds a rating of 7.3 out of 10 from 174 votes, which indicates a generally favourable response from those who have seen it, though the modest number of votes suggests a relatively limited audience outside Japan.