In a strange twist of fate, two animated films this year, “Break of Dawn” and “Drifting Home,” take place in and around danchi, the public housing apartment complexes that popped up in Japan during the post-World War II economic boom.
These complexes, which once symbolized the rise of the nuclear family but are now falling into disrepair, seem to hold a certain nostalgic appeal, even — or especially — for a generation of filmmakers who never actually had the chance to live in them. In these films, danchi also seem to represent a sense of loss for their young protagonists: At the same the building’s disrepair forces them and their families to move to newer residences, they’re also making the leap from childhood to adolescence, saying goodbye to innocence.
Set in the year 2049, the protagonists of Tomoyuki Kurokawa’s “Break of Dawn” live in a danchi in western Tokyo called Asagaya Jutaku (the source manga was optimistic about how long it would hold up; the real-life Asagaya Jutaku was torn down in 2013). The main difference between the present day and 2049 is the presence of household robots that help out with chores and watch over the children. One of those children is Yuma (voiced by Hana Sugisaki), who loves outer space and technology but is less than impressed by his family’s own robot, Nanako (Aoi Yuki): Even though its intellect is a copy of his favorite satellite equipped with artificial intelligence, it won’t talk to him about space. Not fair!