‘A New Dawn’ Review: This Dull and Incoherent Anime Feature Debut Doesn’t Care About Its Audience

Theatrical anime has never been more popular on the global stage than it is today. In 2025, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle” and “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” broke international box-office records to become some of the year’s most talked-about Japanese features. The world’s major film festivals have begun to follow suit. Last Fall, Mamoru Hosoda’s film “Scarlet” premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Now, in the Berlinale’s competition, we have “A New Dawn.” But is it really?

Yoshitoshi Shinomiya got his start in animation working on Makoto Shinkai projects, first as a background artist on “Children Who Chase Lost Voices” (2011) and “The Garden of Words” (2013), then as a key animator on Shinkai’s breakout smash-hit “Your Name” (2016). “A New Dawn” is Shinomiya’s directorial debut — an original anime feature which he directed, wrote, and storyboarded.

The setting is Niura City, likely a fictionalized Miura, Kanagawa prefecture, just south of Tokyo. Typhoons are common in this area, but the Obinata family’s reason for feeling apocalyptic dread is not a natural one. On a sunny day punctuated by the chirping of cicadas, three childhood friends — Kaoru and brothers Chicchi and Keitaro — look on as the latter’s father is hounded by the townsfolk about their tree-flanked house’s leasehold. Threatened with eviction, the family must face the possibility of leaving. Overnight, Mr. Obinata does so, disappearing without a trace. Five years later, Kaoru has left Niura behind too, becoming a successful projection mapper in Tokyo — but her hometown comes calling. Back home, the angsty Keitaro is working on a legendary firework, determined to dazzle the townsfolk and save their home.

The characters of “A New Dawn” frequently talk of “Shuhari.” Through context cues, Shuhari is understood as the legendary firework in question, but Shinomiya has bafflingly little interest in filling you in on what’s going on with any clarity. With every repeat utterance of the film’s frustratingly elusive key info, the picture gets slightly clearer — but shouldn’t it have been from the start?

The color palette is pleasing, sure — a pastel, occasionally painterly array of lime greens, blues, and yellows. Character designs are clean and readable, albeit unexpressive. The scenes they occupy are smoothly panned across, as if they were a series of static screens. This effect is one of the most interesting quirks of “A New Dawn.” While the limited animation lends the film an unfortunately cheap and televisual feel, objects such as curtains sway slightly in the breeze, as if more alive than the rest of the environment — begging to be interacted with. The approach feels indebted to the animation of classic point-and-click adventure games such as “Broken Sword.”

Between more regular dialogue scenes, the film goes off on occasional stylistic tangents, shifting momentarily and without warning into live-action stop motion, to represent a drunken stupor, or rippling wind and water that moves in a style reminiscent of Raymond Briggs’ animated “The Snowman,” to express the characters’ relationship to their firework ambitions. These sequences can be beguilingly attractive, but their inclusions are complete non sequiturs — blink-and-you’ll-miss-it digressions toward a more engaging film.

Still, “A New Dawn” remains remarkably dull to watch. This is a film where the words “Administrative Subrogation Order” are used frequently. The impersonal nature of such phrases is part of the issue. One scene has the characters head to “the industry-academia collaboration event.” Bureaucracy can make for a great anchor — Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist” and Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s “Shin Godzilla” are a testament to that — but in those films, the exposition is succinct, not slight, and the strength of the character writing drives the story forward.

“A New Dawn” is also plainly missing any good character writing. Shinomiya has taken up his mentor Shinkai’s worst tendency: These characters are thinly drawn, speaking in expository, emotionally detached statements that can’t even quite be called functional. Kaoru is our protagonist, but we spend most of the film wondering why, given that the film’s central conflict concerns a family legacy that she has less stake in than her friends do. The trio remarks upon facts of each other’s work achievements and life histories that we haven’t been effectively clued in on. These conversations do not invite us in as an audience. One early road trip scene is particularly exasperating, carrying the feeling of carpooling with acquaintances who simply don’t like you enough to involve you. Shinomiya’s debut doesn’t care enough about its audience, and it’s hard to care about the characters or their plight as a result.

A film this locally specific will likely fare a little better domestically, but, as a Japan-France co-production, it’s expecting a wider welcome. Shinomiya’s engagement with the impact of climate change, gentrification, and urban encroachment on our green world is admirable, but these themes are explored in a series of undeveloped “yes, and”-style non sequiturs, both visual and aural, which leave us at a greater distance. A new dawn in anime is indeed arriving, but Shinomiya’s contribution fails to spark.

Grade: C-

“A New Dawn” premiered at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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