If you loved Your Name, you should probably get excited about the first film from one of its animators

A unit director and key animator from Makoto Shinkai's hit film Your Name is making his own directorial debut soon, and it's looking beautiful so far.

Yoshitoshi Shinomiya isn't a household name, but he has worked on some projects you've likely heard of, namely the 2016 film Your Name. Now, as reported by Variety, he's looking to make his own claim in the world of directing with the upcoming anime film A New Dawn. At this point in time, there's no trailer just yet, but a few stills from the production have been released and they certainly look like they'll be offering a unique visual treat. The film is apparently quite a personal one for Shinomiya, as it is inspired by how the Japanese landscape changed following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011.

The film specifically follows Keitaro, a young man who has lived in an inactive fireworks factory for the past four years that is about to go into administrative action. There, Variety writes that he chases "the illusion of a father who vanished years before. The location used to be nestled in a lush forest, but the surrounding area has recently been redeveloped by the city, which covered the land with solar panels. Only a scant bit of greenery around the factory remains amongst the sea of panels."

Speaking to Variety, Shinomiya said that the idea first came to him in 2016, saying, "One day, on the way to my workshop, my child looked out the car window and cried out, 'I can see the sea!' I realised that the solar panels my child saw through the trees actually looked like the surface of the water. At that moment, I thought, 'This is a new scenery of Japan, and the next generation will capture it with this kind of sensitivity, though I saw such landscape as something negative.' I felt that moment was very meaningful to me, and I believe it was the beginning of this project."

Utsushita will serve as character designer for the project, who did the character designs for the anime adaptation of Heavenly Delusion, while Akiko Majima, a background artist on Your Name, will art direct. Asmik Ace, a company that actually used to distribute games like Altered Beast and the original Civilization, will be producing the film alongside French production company Miyu Productions.

There's no specific release date for the film just yet, but it's expected to release sometime in 2025.