From Up On Poppy Hill [Movie]

Umi Matsuzaki is a 16-year-old student at Isogo High School living in Coquelicot Manor, a boarding house overlooking the Port of Yokohama in Japan. Her mother Ryoko is a medical professor studying abroad in the United States. Umi runs the house and looks after her younger siblings, Sora and Riku, and her grandmother, Hana. College student Sachiko Hirokouji and doctor-in-training Miki Hokuto also live there. Each morning, Umi raises a set of signal flags with the message “I pray for safe voyages”.

One day, a poem about the flags being raised by a local girl is published in the school newspaper. Shun Kazama, the poem’s author, witnesses the flags from sea as he rides a tugboat to school. Umi meets Shun when he participates in a daredevil stunt for the newspaper, leaving Umi with a negative first impression. Umi later accompanies Sora to obtain Shun’s autograph at the Latin Quarter, an old and dilapidated building housing the high school’s clubs. Umi learns that Shun publishes the school newspaper, along with Shir? Mizunuma, the school’s student government president. She ends up helping on the newspaper. During a debate on the future of the Latin Quarter, which may be demolished, Shun convinces the other students that they want to renovate the building. At Umi’s request, the female student body should help renovate the building.

Back at Coquelicot Manor, Umi shows Shun a photograph of three young naval men. One of these men is her deceased father Y?ichir? Sawamura, who was killed in the Korean War. Shun, who has a duplicate of Umi’s photograph, isolates himself from Umi, and later reveals that they may be related by blood during a confrontation with Umi. Umi is able to hide her feelings from Shun, and they continue as friends.

The renovation of the Latin Quarter is complete; however, the Kanagawa Prefectural Board of Education decides to proceed with the building’s demolition. The students nominate Shun, Umi, and Shir? to visit Tokyo and meet with Tokumaru, a b