An entire apartment complex adrift at sea, and two childhood friends trying to figure out how to get home — that is the strange, quietly emotional setup of Drifting Home, a 2022 Japanese animated feature directed by Hiroyasu Ishida.
What is Drifting Home about?
The story centers on a group of kids who find themselves stranded together when the housing complex they grew up in is suddenly cut loose and floating across an unexplained sea. With no adults around and no clear way back, the group has to lean on each other, sort out old friendships and old arguments, and work out the practical business of surviving somewhere that should not exist. The film uses its fantastical setting to circle around a more grounded subject: growing up, drifting apart from people you were once close to, and the discomfort of a childhood home changing shape underneath you. Ishida balances the wonder of the setting with a slower, character-driven pace rather than treating the premise as an action showcase.
About the cast
The Japanese voice cast includes Mutsumi Tamura, Asami Seto, Ayumu Murase, Daiki Yamashita, Yumiko Kobayashi, Inori Minase, Kana Hanazawa, and Bin Shimada, giving voice to the young ensemble at the center of the story.
Context & significance
Drifting Home fits into a run of Japanese animated films that use a single surreal event to explore ordinary adolescent friction — falling out with a friend, moving on from a shared childhood space — rather than building a plot around it purely for spectacle. Its two-hour runtime is unusually long for the genre, giving the ensemble room to develop rather than resolving everything in a tight hour.
Watching Drifting Home on Ktime
Drifting Home is available to stream on K-Time with a free account login; the film's page can be browsed without signing in. K-Time's Farsi interface and catalog search make it straightforward for Persian-speaking audiences to find animated features like this one alongside the rest of the library.