S1.E4 ∙ The Cracking Portrait

A young Japanese girl witnesses the horrors of World War II as she struggles to survive after her family is torn apart.

Returning from the Delta War, Mike Davis is left traumatized and adrift in life. Leaving his home town, he eventually winds up in Lake City and takes a quiet job in the local library. There, he meets Jill, a young woman with dreams of being a professional singer. She's already involved with a young surgeon practicing at her father's hospital, but she finds herself attracted to the withdrawn Mike. As she falls in love with him, she tries to break through the wall of sadness Mike has built around himself, but outside forces are conspiring to keep the two lovers apart.

The Kildren, a group of eternally young fighter pilots, experience the sudden loss of innocence as they battle the enemy in astonishing dogfights above the clouds.

This animated film--Japan's first--was a propaganda piece made to show the Japanese public how the Japanese military had achieved such decisive victories in the South Pacific. It tells the story of young Japanese boys from their school days to their joining the army and fighting against Japan's "enemies" and shows how the animals in the jungle--meant to symbolize the residents of the Asian countries the Japanese conquered--welcomed the Japanese army's "liberating" them from their western masters.

A dramatic yet heart-warming story of cross-cultural friendship among children in the aftermath of WWII, presented by Tokyo-based award-winning animation studio Production I.G. Based on true events.

Follows the decisive battles in Thunderbolt sector around the debris of Side 4 during the One Year War, between Earth Federation's prototype Full Armor Gundam and Zeon's prototype Psycho Zaku.