Aozora to Oscar Peterson

With blue skies as her canvas and Oscar Peterson as her muse, Miki Imai delivers a song that Studio Nostalook turns into a short animated piece that honestly hits different from what you'd expect. This is a music video made for NHK's Minna no Uta — that long-running program where they pair songs with original animation — and at just one episode, it's over before you know it. But that brevity is kind of the point. The song itself has this warm, jazz-tinged quality (the title literally references Oscar Peterson, one of the greatest jazz pianists ever), and the animation leans into that mood with a style that feels handcrafted and personal rather than polished and commercial. It's aimed at kids on paper, but there's a gentleness to it that works regardless of age. Think of it less as something you sit down to watch and more as something you stumble across and carry with you for the rest of the day. If you liked the quiet emotional precision of Liz and the Blue Bird, or the way Kids on the Slope uses jazz as a language between characters, this occupies a similar emotional space — just condensed into a few minutes. It's not trying to tell a grand story. It's trying to make you feel something specific about music and open skies, and it does that well. Worth the handful of minutes it asks for.