Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鉄道の夜, Ginga Tetsudō no Yoru, alternately Nokto de la Galaksia Fervojo in Esperanto) is a 1985 Japanese anime film directed by Gisaburo Sugii, based on the 1934 fantasy novel of the same name by Kenji Miyazawa.

Its plot follows a young cat named Giovanni (voiced by Mayumi Tanaka), who journeys on a train with his classmate Campanella (Chika Sakamoto) through the Milky Way galaxy.

After school, Giovanni works a typesetting job at a print shop, and buys a loaf of bread and some sugar.

They walk down a flight of steps and are directed by a sign towards "The Pliocene Coast", where they find their teacher leading an excavation of fossils from crystallized sands.

As the train passes Scorpius, one of the children recalls a story about a scorpion who perished in a well after escaping a weasel; regretting that it did not sacrifice itself for a good cause, the scorpion prayed to bring happiness to others in its next life, and its body burst into a bright flame that still burns in the night sky.

As Giovanni passes through town on his way home, he learns that Campanella fell into a river while saving one of their classmates, Zanelli, from drowning.

Giovanni hurries to the river, where he finds Campanella's father giving up searching for his son, as his disappearance occurred 45 minutes prior.

[4] The film's title in Esperanto is Nokto de la Galaksia Fervojo and is shown on the cover of the soundtrack.

Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network commented that the film was "a beautiful journey, albeit an ominous one.

gave it three out of five stars, praising its handling of death and stating that it "does have a good tale to tell" while comparing watching the film to a taking a long train ride.

[8][better source needed] When it was later released on DVD in 2001, CPM produced an English dub that starred Veronica Taylor as Giovanni and Crispin Freeman as Campanella.