Penguin Highway

Penguin Highway (ペンギン・ハイウェイ, 2018) is a Japanese animated fantasy film you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Hiroyasu Ishida and produced by Studio Colorido, it adapts Tomihiko Morimi's novel of the same name. Runtime: 117 minutes.

Fourth-grader Aoyama keeps a scientific journal and treats every mystery as a problem to be solved with enough observation. One morning, penguins start appearing in his suburban town — waddling down the streets for no apparent reason. He traces the phenomenon to a young woman who works at the local dental clinic, and the connection between her and the birds turns out to run much deeper than any fourth-grader's notebook can fully capture.

This is the kind of film that treats a child's curiosity as completely serious rather than something to be patted on the head. Yu Aoi and Mamiko Noto lead the voice cast. Stream Penguin Highway (2018) online on iFILM.