Hotarubi no Mori e

Hotaru is a young girl who spends her summers at her grandfather's house in the countryside. One day she wanders into a forest said to belong to the mountain god and becomes lost among its spirits. A masked boy named Gin finds her and leads her out, and she returns the following day to thank him. The two become friends, meeting each summer as Hotaru grows older. Yet Gin carries a curse from the mountain god: if a human ever touches him, he will vanish forever. Their closeness deepens over the years even as that single condition keeps them apart.

The 2011 Japanese animated film adapts Yuki Midorikawa's manga of the same name. Takahiro Omori directed and wrote the screenplay, with Ayako Yokoyama, Hirofumi Sugawara and Masanori Miyake producing for the studio Brain's Base. Ayane Sakura voices Hotaru and Koki Uchiyama voices Gin, while the supporting cast includes Shinpachi Tsuji as Hotaru's grandfather, Izumi Sawada as her mother, Hayato Taya as Ryouta and Kanehira Yamamoto as Shadow. At 45 minutes, it is a short work, and it was the first of three features Omori directed, followed by Natsume's Book of Friends the Movie: Ephemeral Bond in 2018 and Sumikko Gurashi: The Little Wizard in the Blue Moonlight in 2021.

Viewers have rated the film highly: 7.8 out of 10 on IMDb from around 25,000 votes, and 8.3 out of 10 on TMDB from a smaller pool of about 1,250 votes.