Some sort of a sequel to his 2004 film "Hana & Alice" where Ann Suzuki played the part of Hana and Yu Aoi played Alice.
Yu Aoi, almost a Shunji Iwai regular as she, besides the 2004 and 2015 Hana & Alice duo, has starred in the Masterpiece
"All About Lily Shou Shou" (her 2001 feature film debut) and in his obscure but interesting "Vampire" from 2012.
In this animated film Ann Suzuki returns and does the voice of Hana and Yu Aoi ditto does the voice of Alice.

Above: The 2004 film "Hana & Alice" in the Hong Kong Panorama DVD with Anne Suzuki left and Yu Aoi right

The Story:

Tetsuko Arisugawa or "Kuro" is new in class and she soon feels that there's something weird going on in the class.
Kuro meets an old friend from her old school, Fuko, and they go to ballet class together and Fuko wants to call Kuro
(Yu Aoi: voice) Alice, and what's "The Ishinomori Middle School Murders" ?
Kuro soon finds out that her classmates are bonkers and are members of some sect involving Black Magic, something
they call "Judases" and something about a boy that has disappeared and being murdered.

Kuro or Alice lives with her mother, who's an author and writes about Murders, and she's fast and makes it to the
athletics team. A neighbour to Alice is Hana Arai (Voice: Anne Suzuki) and she's a "Shut in girl" (that japanese sad
phenomena) and she should've been in Alice's class. Hana tells Alice that Kotaro Yuda is the boy who died .... or moved
and the girls start sleuthing around to solve the mystery of what really happened to him.

Actually, this film is all full of scenes leading nowhere, Dead-Ends, to be aborted and what really matters is just to enjoy
the girls flimsy quest of finding Kotaro Yuda. But it's a charming "Day and Night on the Town" and i liked the scenes
with Alice and the endearing Old man from the office the most, ha, ha, what a great detective she is. Charming film.

Presented in a not stated on the sleeve ratio, but widescreen with japanese audio 5.1 or 2.0 with english subtitles,
region 2 bluray. Extra an Interview with director Makoto Shinkai (26 minutes in japanese with english subtitles, 2016, he's
the hailed director of the 2007 anime "5 Centimeters per Second)