You, Fireworks & a Promise Lights Up Japan Theaters After July 17 Debut

Summer screens across Japan are glowing with more than festival sparklers. The anime feature Kimi to Hanabi to Yakusoku to (You, Fireworks, and Our Promise) opened nationwide on July 17, and its official channels are still riding the first-week wave with interviews, stage greetings, and a full-court “now showing” push.

Adapted from Kaori Mado’s Gagaga Bunko novel, the 96-minute film threads a fragile teenage romance through the real-world Nagaoka Festival Grand Fireworks—one of Japan’s “big three” fireworks nights and a living memorial for the city’s wartime past. High-schooler Makoto is pulled between a classmate who seems destined to meet him and a mysterious girl who may have stepped out of another era, with a single fireworks painting holding the secret.

Shōri Satō of idol group timelesz makes his anime-film lead debut as Makoto, opposite Nanoka Hara (Suzume) as Aki and seiyuu powerhouse Rie Takahashi as the time-slipped Haru. Natsuko Yokozawa, a Niigata native, voices Makoto’s mother. Timelesz also delivers the theme song “Kienai Hanabi” (Eternal Fireworks). Direction is by Kei Suzuki, with animation from SynergySP and The Answer Studio under Shin-Ei Animation planning and Shochiku/Shin-Ei distribution.

This week the production kept hometown heat high: voice cast including Takahashi, Nanami Yamashita, and Kento Shiraishi held Niigata and Nagaoka stage greetings packed with local dialect talk and festival lore, while Satō and Hara dropped breezy summer promo spots. For otaku hunting a softer theatrical counterpoint to blockbuster action anime, Kimi-Hana is the midsummer date-night pick still lighting marquees right now.

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