“From Up on Poppy Hill” takes a gentle, nostalgic look at Japan in 1963, from the perspective of a schoolgirl who lives in the Yokohama neighborhood evoked in the title. Though it was written and “planned” by Hayao Miyazaki, perhaps the greatest living fantasist in world cinema (and directed by his son Goro), this movie, based on a manga by Chizuru Takahashi and Tetsuro Sayama, is a lovely example of the strong realist tendency in Japanese animation. Its visual magic lies in painterly compositions of foliage, clouds, architecture and water, and its emotional impact comes from the way everyday life is washed in the colors of memory.

Umi (voiced in the English version by Sarah Bolger) lives in a house overlooking the water. Her father, a ship captain, was lost at sea during the Korean War, and her mother is studying in the United States, leaving Umi to help her grandmother look after two younger children and a house full of eccentric boarders. The lonely girl is a staple of the Miyazaki universe, and Umi’s melancholy, thoughtful manner suffuses the atmosphere of “From Up on Poppy Hill.”