It’s been an exciting time for Studio Ghibli fans. First, beloved director Hayao Miyazaki assured us all a few years ago that he was leaving, before pulling a Favre and signing on for JUST ONE MORE project (sure), and now, for those fans who’d rather not scour the darknet for a bootlegged copy with mediocre-to-indecipherable subtitles, Ghibli’s 1993 film Ocean Waves is coming to American theaters for the first time ever in 2017.

And it’s not just coming to theaters, it’s coming to theaters in a new 4K restoration, and as you can see from the trailer, it looks absolutely gorgeous. It hardly seems like it was made in the ’90s at all — there’s none of that graininess you get from older animated films, and all the colors, while chosen from a more muted palette than, say, Ponyo, are as vibrant as they can be. And, naturally, it’s probably going to be another tearjerker.

Here’s the films’s synopsis:

Rarely seen outside of Japan, Ocean Waves is a subtle, poignant and wonderfully detailed story of adolescence and teenage isolation. Taku and his best friend Yutaka are headed back to school for what looks like another uneventful year. But they soon find their friendship tested by the arrival of Rikako, a beautiful new transfer student from Tokyo whose attitude vacillates wildly from flirty and flippant to melancholic. When Taku joins Rikako on a trip to Tokyo, the school erupts with rumors, and the three friends are forced to come to terms with their changing relationships.

And a special poster for the American release:

Studio Ghibli
Studio Ghibli
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According to /Film, Ocean Waves will open at the IFC Center in New York City on December 28 and will play for one night at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles, before a home video release sometime early next year.

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