Only Yesterday is perhaps Takahata’s purest work, daring to use Studio Ghibli’s jewel-like color and superb command of technique not in the service of depicting fantasy, science fiction, or even war, but to show the infinite value of an ordinary life lived in ordinary times. Flashing between the 1966 youth and 1982 maturity of its protagonist, Taeko, Only Yesterday gives a rich and quiet voice to a Tokyo office worker who journeys into the countryside to commune with the ghost of her childhood.