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Synopsis

Jirou Horikoshi, unable to become a pilot because of poor eyesight, leaves his rural home to study aeronautical engineering at Tokyo Imperial University with a single aim: to create aircraft like those of his admired Italian innovator, Giovanni Battista Caproni. His move to the capital coincides with the catastrophic Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, during which he rescues a maid connected to Naoko Satomi’s family. That crisis ushers in more than twenty years of social upheaval and growing national tension that culminate in Japan’s surrender in World War II. Over the ensuing decades, Horikoshi's dedication to designing planes—including the development that leads to the Mitsubishi A6M Zero—pushes him through travel, professional challenges, and personal trials. As his work becomes entwined with wartime realities, he grapples with the ethical and emotional costs of pursuing an aesthetic and technical ideal amid broader human consequences.