A “literary VR animated film” with an interactive storyline that has been acclaimed by film festivals around the world

This VR film was nominated for the Grand Prix in the VR category at the Ottawa and Annecy International Film Festivals, the world's three major animation film festivals, and has received high acclaim in Japan and abroad from 2023 to 2024. Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa wrote the original story and Academy Award-nominated animator Koji Yamamura directed. Planned and produced by Kodansha VR Lab, it has won high acclaim for its high-end VR productions around the world. This work, which runs approximately 35 minutes in total, is a “literary VR animation work” in the form of a story experience. The player can enjoy the performance of the music band and the dance of the livings that inhabit the ears of the protagonist, a lonely boy, by entering the boy's ears, listen to the lonely voice of each of the objects the boy collects from the earth, and experience the story of his growth as the player turns the notebook in which the boy's memories are recorded. Let's experience a literary 360-degree storytelling experience that can only be experienced in VR.

Synopsis：

What lives in a lonely boy’s ear? And why a boy’s ear…?

A lonely boy dug in the dirt every day and collected what he found in a cookie tin.

In the boy’s notebook, he recorded the lonely voices of the objects he collected. Inside the boy’s ears live four musicians and two Venus’ Flower Basket Shrimps, who play and dance in response to his tears.

He shook a cookie tin filled with found objects in return. In this way, the boy grew up.

The boy grew up and became a salesman selling hearing aids and no longer picked up lonely voices or shed tears. One day, fascinated by a handmade bird brooch seen on the TV news that was found in a Japanese American internment camp, he set out on a journey to collect lonely voices again. What would he find there eventually?

Voice Acting

Man: Daman Mills
Boy: Nicholas Young

Director: Koji Yamamura / Original Author: Yoko Ogawa
Screenplay: Yoko Ogawa, Koji Yamamura
Producer: Kenji Ishimaru
Executive Producer: Yoshinobu Noma
Sound Director: Masataka Ota
Music: Koji Ueno
CG Director: Gee Yeung
Lead Unity Engineer: Jorge Pedrero Reyna
Line Producer: Yumiko Kano
Production Manager: Yui Tamanaha
Planning and Production: Kodansha VR Lab, Ltd.

VR Film - My Inner Ear Quartet screenshots