Director: Kazuaki Seki
Writers: Date-san, Akiko Higashimura
Stars: Mei Nagano, Yo Oizumi, Ai Mikami
Synopsis: High schooler Akiko has big plans to become a popular mangaka before she even graduates, but she needs to get much better at drawing if she ever wants to reach her goal. Looking for an easy fix, she signs up for an art class, thinking all her problems will soon be solved. She’s in for a surprise: her new instructor is a sword-wielding taskmaster who doesn’t care about manga one bit. But maybe this unconventional art teacher is just what she needs to realize her dreams!
It’s a bit daunting to enter a movie based on a source material you know nothing of, hoping you’ll be somewhat endeared by what’s on screen. Having never heard of Josei-manga artist Akiko Higashimura and the source material Kakukaku Shikajika (aka Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey), I was slightly worried that I wouldn’t connect with director Kazuaki Seki’s live-action adaptation of Higashimura’s source material, which had its North American Premiere at the 2025 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival in the Cheval Noir section.
Fortunately, anyone can resonate with this inspiring, albeit predictable story that tracks Akiko’s (played in the film by Mei Nagano) life from an aspiring artist to the mangaka she is known today. Anyone will be able to latch onto her grasp on life and the world through the unconventional teaching she receives from Kenzo Hidaka (Yo Oizumi), her art school mentor who shows Akiko what making art truly requires. Hidaka isn’t your typical art teacher – he’s dressed in gym clothes and carries a bamboo sword that he brandishes on many occasions. But Akiko will soon learn that his heart is in the right place, as he perceives the world – and art – differently than most of his contemporaries.
The result is an easygoing picture that’s sure to capture the emotions of people who dare to step into this bright and colorful world, filled with evocative, often poetic images, to envelop the audience in Akiko’s journey. For a while, Seki’s movie treads in very conventional, crowd-pleasing territories, but the story he tells is universal. Even those who don’t aspire to be artists will be profoundly moved by how the film discusses Akiko’s dream-chasing journey of pushing through her personal challenges to get to where she is now. Against many unrealistic odds, she never gave up and ensured that, no matter what her teacher would say or make her do, her dreams would come true.
That itself is something anyone can relate to, especially when Hidaka repeatedly tells one thing that Akiko must do in order to become the better artist she wants to be: “Just draw.” However, when she enrolls in university to continue her studies, things take a turn for the worse, and this is when Blank Canvas began to lose me. There’s a specific choice made early on in the movie, where Akiko narrates her story in the third person, dedicated to someone close in her life, that supplants most of the emotional, dramatic moments of its latter half. While it is certainly moving, especially a final sequence of immense poetry that sits with the characters in ways I didn’t expect after a relatively zippy and fun introductory half, it still didn’t produce its intended effect, because I immediately knew what would happen to one of the characters as soon as the film opened.
Had we not known early on that something hugely drastic would happen to Akiko, perhaps I would’ve joined the chorus of tears, sniffles, and nose blowing that flooded the Cinéma du Musée audience during Blank Canvas’ latter half, because its last scene is genuinely incredible. So is Mei Nagano, who portrays Akiko with so much sensitivity and grace that it’s hard not to fall in love with the character. The chemistry she shares with Oizumi, as Hidaka, is also incredibly palpable and often hilarious, especially as the teacher pushes Akiko to her limits. Yet, Seki also never loses sight of its moving emotional center, especially as the film reaches its tearjerking conclusion.
Both Nagano and Higashimura were in attendance during the film’s North American premiere, and the adulations they received when the credits rolled were enough for them to break down into tears as the movie totally won over the Fantasia audience. Even I, someone who didn’t know what movie I was going into, not knowing a thing about the manga, and Higashimura’s story, was also moved by the reception – and standing ovation – it got at the end. I may have been stone faced during the scene where everyone cried, but I certainly will remember this screening as a highlight of this year’s Fantasia.
