A 100-meter sprint is over in about ten seconds. “Hyakuemu.” (100 Meters), the theatrical anime based on the debut manga by Uoto, portrays boys who stake everything on that single instant. Uoto—now widely known for “Orb: On the Movements of the Earth”—poured raw, unfiltered drive into this early work. Released on September 19, 2025, the film is about to mark its first anniversary, and a commemorative revival screening has just been announced. As film-music lovers, we can’t treat this as a mere re-run: what we most want to revisit on the big screen is the score by Hiroaki Tsutsumi that anchors the entire film.
Pouring the world’s sounds into ten seconds
What you can’t skip when discussing the music of “Hyakuemu.” is that the entire score was built through film scoring. DISC1 of the two-disc original soundtrack, released by Pony Canyon on September 17, 2025, contains 20 tracks of underscore. The astonishing part: recording took place across three cities—New York, Budapest, and Tokyo. A runner’s breath, each stride striking the ground, the tension and momentum compressed into ten seconds—to express all of it, the sounds of renowned musicians from each location were woven into single tracks. A planet-spanning sound is poured into the tiny distance of 100 meters.
Scoring a track-and-field story is surprisingly hard. There are no flashy action set-pieces, no long dialogue scenes—only the repetitive motion of running and the emotions blazing inside it. Tsutsumi’s score gives that both “body heat” and “speed” at once. Restrained piano and strings tick like a heartbeat, then surge forward at the decisive moment. It’s less background music than music gasping for breath alongside the runner. That’s exactly why, even lifted off the screen and heard as a standalone album, the memory of that sprint comes vividly back.
Tsutsumi, a border-crossing architect of scores
Hiroaki Tsutsumi is a composer who has scored many popular anime, including “Tokyo Revengers,” “Jujutsu Kaisen,” and “Dr. STONE.” What these tonally different works share is his stance of “designing a work’s body heat through sound.” Rather than forcing things through with showy melodies, he stacks up sounds that ring out as inevitabilities from within the story. With “Hyakuemu.” that skill reached its peak: the raw, rotoscope-based animation is accompanied by a score whose live-performance breath heightens the realism. Image and music amplify each other’s rawness.
DISC2, the “Extended Edition,” is not to be missed either. It holds 12 tracks—demo versions of the underscore, “extra” versions that develop the motifs into standalone pieces, even workout and walking versions. You can see the ambition to leap beyond the frame of a soundtrack and stand as a full instrumental album. It’s a rare disc that lets you peek into how a screen composer dismantles and reconstructs his own motifs.
One year on, verifying the “sound” on screen
From Friday, September 18, 2026, the “Hyakuemu.” first-anniversary revival screening begins. It’s a one-week limited run at six theaters nationwide, starting with kino cinéma Shinjuku, and attendees receive a newly drawn postcard (anniversary ver.) by character designer Keisuke Kojima. On September 18 and 24, teach-in screenings featuring the rotoscope actors who supported the film are also planned. In an age when you can stream it anywhere, the point of going to a theater is to bathe your whole body—through a cinema sound system—in that sound recorded in New York, Budapest, and Tokyo. The story of boys who bet their lives on ten seconds, once more, together with Tsutsumi’s music. This time, let’s put the “sound” center stage and savor it anew.
