Tsuneo Maeda

A gray wolf raised on a farm kills the family dog, and to save him from being destroyed, a boy named Lasset makes a trek through the wilderness with the wolf to a wilderness sanctuary 300 miles to the north. The BGM in the film consists entirely of Dvorak's Serenade for Strings, making it perhaps the only anime since Gauche the Cellist to make use of a single piece of classical music as the soundtrack. The plot of the film is simple and the outcome obvious, but the atmosphere of the film is genuine, and it is very moving in parts thanks to Dvorak's music (which is scored entirely for the most emotional of the instrument groups, the strings). This is a straightforward drama about the friendship between a boy and his wolf, and it pushes all the buttons you'd expect, but it's very enjoyable despite all that.

The film is centered around Noel, a young girl and her dog, Pup, who both live on the Planet Noel. While relaxing, Noel comes up with the idea to deliver ice cream to the sun. The two fly off and make their way toward the sun.

Based on a children's picture book of the same name. A Christmas tale about a bird who was raised by tree after it was abandoned. The tree was then cut down for people in the city to use for Christmas celebrations. The bird desperately is trying to find its adoptive tree mother with the help of Jeremy, a penniless orphan, who heard her story so they go and search every tree being used in town. The search in the cold takes a toll on Jeremy until Santa Claus appears, but is it really him?

In 1949, after the war, Hidé and his sister Myoko are poor and live in a makeshift hut under the bridge and do their best to survive. When Myoko recovers from an illness, he offers to take her to the Zoo to show her the impressive elephant that marked him during a visit when he was younger. He will be angry to find that there is no more elephant, replaced by a cardboard reproduction. Sankichi, a Zoo employee will tell him the sad truth about what happened.