Director: Shigeyoshi Tsukahara
A haze the color of a bruise hangs over the city in Kurayukaba, and every resident who walks into it seems to vanish without a trace.
What is Kurayukaba about?
Set in a retrofuturistic settlement built into a canyon, this short animated feature follows a low-level worker for the local rail authority who gets pulled into investigating a string of disappearances tied to the mysterious purple smoke drifting through the lower districts. As he digs past official explanations, he finds a city built on brittle infrastructure and buried compromises, where authorities are more interested in controlling the story than solving it. The mystery unfolds in a tightly wound 64 minutes, trading spectacle for atmosphere: steam-powered trains, narrow alleyways, and a sense that the ground itself might not be trustworthy. What starts as a missing-persons case widens into questions about who actually runs the city and what they are willing to hide to keep it running.
Cast & crew
Hakuzan Kanda voices the reluctant investigator at the center of the story, with Tomoyo Kurosawa, Yu Serizawa, and Raikou Sakamoto filling out a small ensemble of railway workers and city residents caught up in the search. The cast is compact by design, keeping the focus on a handful of characters rather than a sprawling city-wide roster.
Context & significance
Directed by Shigeyoshi Tsukahara and released in 2024, the film comes from the team behind the earlier Sonny Boy project and carries a similarly distinct visual identity, built around a steampunk-adjacent world of rail lines and industrial haze. At just over an hour, it's structured more like an extended mystery episode than a conventional feature, favoring mood and world-building over a sprawling plot.
Where & how to watch
The film is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing, letting the mystery of the vanishing residents play out entirely in Farsi. Reading through the details on this page is free; watching the film itself only requires a K-Time account login, on a service built around Farsi-language streaming for Iranian audiences abroad.