The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Sparks of Tomorrow

In the summer of 1907, 15-year-old Inako Momokawa lives in the Fushimi area of Kyoto and is the second daughter of a sake brewer. Nothing she does ever comes out right, and she receives a scolding from her father every day. Her only relief is the trust she places in her prayers to the gods. One day, while at Fushimi Inari shrine, she meets a freewheeling young man named Kihachi Sakamoto. He rejects the gods and boasts of the incoming age of electricity. The topic of marriage suddenly comes up in Inako's household, and Inako is about to give up hope. It is then that Kihachi draws out Inako's true feelings of wanting to run away from her family. The only way to stop her marriage is to find an unusual book called the "Electrical Catalog." The book is a prediction book about electricity that Kihachi wrote when he was a child, but his older brother Seiroku stole it, and its current whereabouts are unknown. Inako and Kihachi set out to find the book across Kyoto and Shiga prefectures.

Sparks of Tomorrow is based on the 20 Seiki Denki Mokuroku novel by author Hiro Yūki and illustrator Kazumi Ikeda. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Sundays.

I don't think we can properly understand how exciting electricity must have been in the early 20th Century. I remember an old man I was friends with – born in 1920 – telling me how his parents took him in the buggy into town to see the first electric streetlight on our island when he was a little boy, and the wonder that still filled his voice was striking. I thought of him a lot during this episode, because Kihachi and his older brother Seiroku have that same enthusiasm and wonder in the opening scenes, set in 1901. Electricity is magic that can be explained, and the explanation only makes it more wonderful for them.

The story proper takes place in 1905 (Meiji 40), after Seiroku, who frankly had “bait” written all over him, has died in the Russo-Japanese War. It's a cheap narrative trick to force Kihachi to grow up, but it does work – the formerly bright-eyed young boy is now a grumpy, disheartened teen living with his uncle and cousin. Kihachi is still devoted to electricity and his cousin Yajiro his helping him work on a slide projector. But he's been working without his brother's electrical catalogue (in the compendium sense rather than the shopping one), he's a bit limited in what he can do.

The story doesn't truly kick off until the end of the episode, but that hardly matters. Although, wow, if you want an antagonist you can truly hate, this show has got one. Yosuke, the scion of a wealthy family, has apparently known the whereabouts of the catalogue for some time, and he is willing to do anything to get his greedy mitts on it, up to and including marrying Inako, the younger daughter of the household. As for why the catalogue is there, we don't yet know, but my money's on her older sister Noriko having at one point been friends with or dating Seiroku. In any event, she in no way wants Yosuke to have it, so she sends Inako to Kihachi with the book. I haven't been so tense watching something as I was when Inako was dithering around with the slide projector and not giving Kihachi the damn book while Yosuke drove up to his shop in a long time.

But honestly, even if there hadn't been even that much plot, this episode would have drawn me in. The background art is incredible, a steam punk, Ghibli-esque fever dream filled with rich details, the haze of steam, and exquisite markers of the time period, from the stained glass window in Yosuke's car to the shape of Kihachi's lightbulbs. Colors run the gamut from saturated to washed out in perfect harmony and characters move through smoothly unless they're purposefully drawn to look like old-fashioned puppets. Inako's a little too clumsy-cute and I don't love Kihachi's exaggerated duck lips, but overall this is simply a joy to watch. It's even better if you like history, but don't let that hold you back from experiencing this. I think it's going to be good.