Scarcely any time has passed since the conclusion of the first film, just enough for the construction of the Tokyo Tower to be completed and for the youngest neighborhood residents to hit a growth spurt or two. Struggling writer Chagawa continues to wrestle his muse while caring for the orphan boy Junnosuke and pining for his vanished, would-be lover. Junnosuke’s biological father continues to be a nuisance, threatening to take custody of his child back. The old lady at the tobacco shop continues to meddle and gossip. The spunky Mutsuko continues to bring a feminine touch to the confines of Suzuki Motors. Everything, in other words, is as it was, with one major change. Suzuki’s cousin is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and, needing to travel north to take work on a dam project, needs to leave his young daughter Mika to stay with the family.

Just as was the case with the first film, Always 2 is primarily a nostalgic look back at blue collar life in post war Japan, a long gone world meticulously recreated thanks to director Yamazaki’s special effects wizardry – wizardry that mostly stays in the background where it belongs, with the exception of one ripping Godzilla fantasy sequence in the early going. It is a film that clearly misses simpler times, a film that places huge value on the importance of families both biological and chosen as well as the strength of community. But nostalgic and uplifting though the films may be Yamazaki is smart enough to understand that if they are to work on any lasting level they must be populated with believable, likeable characters dealing with legitimate issues. And so we have Mika resenting her new surroundings and having to adjust to a new way of life; we have Suzuki’s survivor guilt from having survived the war when so many of his friends died; we have Chagawa’s impending sense of failure as a writer, a failure that leads him to question his fitness to raise Junnosuke.

Both Always pictures are fairly heavily plotted, both featuring a large cast of characters with busy lives, but both keep the plotting squarely in the domestic world. Sure, life is moving along in Tokyo but these films are concerned with what directly affects the residents of this one corner of the world. Yamazaki clearly loves these characters deeply and he is so masterful in how he tells their story that it is impossible for the audience not to fall in love with them, too. You know things will all work out in the end, the director cares about his creations too much to do them any damage, and you simply wouldn’t have it any other way.

Always 2 is one of those very rare sequels that stands up easily to the original picture, a film that clearly understands the strengths that made the first film so successful and is smart enough not to tinker with what worked in the past, choosing simply to slightly expand the cast of characters while continuing to explore their lives rather than messing with a good thing. Will there be more Always films? None have been announced but there is certainly room to continue the story and I hope they do.