Penguin Highway

Penguin Highway follows Aoyama, a fourth-grader who keeps careful notebooks recording his observations and experiments as he measures the days until he grows up. His orderly world is disrupted when a group of penguins turns up in his small inland town, far from any ocean. Convinced there is a rational explanation, Aoyama sets out to investigate, and his inquiries draw in his classmates Hamamoto and Uchida as well as a young woman from the local dental clinic whom he calls "big sister." The mystery around the penguins soon widens into a series of stranger occurrences, including a large watery sphere the children find in a clearing. The film is an adventure story about curiosity and a boy's attempt to explain the inexplicable through methodical observation.

The film was released in 2018 and runs 118 minutes. Hiroyasu Ishida directed it, working from a screenplay by Makoto Ueda, with Noriko Ozaki, Katsuhiro Takei and Taku Matsuo producing for Studio Colorido alongside TOHO, Fuji Television Network and dentsu. It stands between Ishida's Rain Town (2011) and Drifting Home (2022), and it is his second directed feature. The voice cast includes Kana Kita as Aoyama, Rie Kugimiya as Uchida, Yu Aoi as the dental clinic worker, Megumi Han as Hamamoto, Miki Fukui as Suzuki and Misaki Kuno as Aoyama's sister. The film took about 4 million dollars worldwide. It holds a 7.1 rating on IMDb from roughly 4,500 votes and a 7.2 on TMDB from around 269 votes; the critics' rating of 7.7 from 24 reviews places it somewhat above those audience scores.