A thoroughly charming found-family Christmas anime which mines comedy from some very tragic scenes and finds a delightful balance between those tragicomic elements. The film excels at weaving a twisting narrative but never feeling tangled. Some aspects of the portrayal of queerness through the character of Hana (Umegaki Yoshiaki) feel regressive in 2023 and through my particular cultural lens as a white Anglo critic but on the whole it feels like Kon Satoshi had his heart in the right place with it particularly as the characters deepen and reveal themselves throughout the narrative.