Short features are the worst length of film, really. A feature can be screened, broadcast, and distributed anywhere. Shorts are generally restricted to festivals and streaming services, but can provide valuable opportunities to build skills and bolster talent, test out new ideas, or act as calling cards on the way to feature funding. The short feature, however, is trapped between one half and a full hour. They are too brief for the features market, and add nothing to the advantages of the short.

One of the places where the short feature actually does seem to find a market is in Japan’s anime industry. A decades-long local market for “original video animation” (or OVAs) has meant that Japan boasts a sufficient number of people willing to spend money on videos and trips to the cinema that mid-length product can actually find some success. British home video distributor All the Anime has released quite a number to the UK as well, including Summer Ghost – a 40-minute film directed by pseudonymous artist and animator loundraw.

There is a rumour that if you go to a particular abandoned airfield and set off a small firework, the so-called “Summer Ghost” will appear. Three Japanese teens travel to the airfield together, each with their own reason for speaking to someone with knowledge of death. When they encounter the spirit Ayane – a mysterious young woman – they are driven to rediscover her body and give it the burial she desires.

Novelist Adachi Hirotaka does an elegant and smart job of giving each of the film’s three protagonists their own distinct reason to go looking for the Summer Ghost. Tomoya (voiced, in the Japanese edition at least, by Kobayashi Chiaki) is being pressured by his controlling mother to drop arts for academia. Aoi (Shimabukuro Miyuri) is a victim of school bullying and contemplating suicide. Ryo (Shimazaki Nobunaga) seems the best adjusted of the three, but perhaps holds the saddest secret of them all.

It is a tonally bleak film, packed with adolescent angst and troubled teens, and viewers should keep that mind if they find this sort of material to be upsetting. Visually it is rather striking: another case where a strong use of colour and well-developed CGI enhancements lift up any limitations in the hand-drawn animation. One hopes loundraw has the opportunity to further develop animated works – and at a more ambitious length.

It is very Japanese, and steeped in quite a bit of local folklore and tradition that domestic viewers probably accept without thinking about it. For foreign audiences there is plenty to look into her and consider, including how Japanese ghost like Ayane – known as a yurei – traditionally operates, the cultural significance of falling cherry blossom, and other elements. It is the short of thing that only adds to the appeal for some anime enthusiasts, giving them an insight into Japanese culture beyond the moving image.

Short features can be difficult to find or experience, particularly if you’re far away from any festivals or in the wrong country in the first place, but when they are done well they can be particularly effective. It is good to see All the Anime embracing these evolved kinds of anime; with any luck some other independent distributors will find away to give their live-action counterparts a chance as well.