The Place Promised in Our Early Days

Makoto Shinkai's first feature-lengthed work - The Place Promised in Our Early Days. Story: Just like Voices in a Distant Star and 5 Centimeters Per Second, this is a story about 2 people and their distances. Unlike Voices where their distance is that of time and space, Place Promised is about their distance across dimensions/dreams/reality. What I like about this concept is how well Shinkai presented it. Sayuri (our heroine) is physically in the world, but spiritually trapped in another. It is very touching to see Hiroki (our hero) search for Sayuri knowing that she is very close yet at the same time very far awayfrom him. While the whole together->separation->search part of the story exciting to watch, the sci-fi/war part felt a little boring. I can understand having that part in the story since we are dealing with the concept dimensions, but it felt a little out of place and it took away from the whole experience. Animation: This is one of the stronger points in this movie. The animation is absolutely gorgeous. There are two things that make this movie incredibly beautiful. The first is the background and the use of colors. The background really speaks to you with its detail and vibrant colors. You can really feel the depth and it is really moving. The other part of the animation that makes it gorgeous is the lighting effects. It is carefully used to emphasize those "key" moments in the movie. It really gives you one of those "whoa" moments where it pushes you back into your seat. Sound: Tenmon is a genius. In order to bring out the emotions of a movie, the BGM is key and Tenmon delivers. The BGM is beautiful and fun to listen to. Also, the score played by Hiroki and Sayuri on the violin is incredible. The only thing lacking in the sound department is an amazing theme song. Kimi no Koe feels a little weak in comparison to the BGM and it failed to capture my attention. Character: There is nothing really special about the main characters. You can say that they're normal. But perhaps thats the appeal of it. Watching these kids grow and become more resolve is an enriching experience. There is nothing special about the supporting characters as well. Overall, it was a very good movie and an excellent follow up to Voices. I am definitely looking forward to finishing up 5cm per Second.

I watched Makoto Shinkai’s first major work, Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star) a year before watching this. Hoshi no Koe was nothing short of breathtaking. The animation, pacing, and plot were all top notch and even more surprising, it was essentially done by one person. After way too many delays, The Place of Promise in Our Early Days was finally released. My initial impression was, ohh pretty. The animation was fantastic; everything was clean, crisp, and vivid. Although, sometimes a bit too clean, crisp, and vivid. This is especially true for the interiorbackgrounds. I think of a brand new shinny kitchen appliance with I see some of the interior backgrounds. However, the "nature" shots didn't give me that impression. Overall, the animation was very beautiful and well done. As for the music....well it was pretty good, as expected of Tenmon however, it really didn’t stand out. The rest however, doesn't really fare as well. As I watching I couldn't help get the feeling that he was trying to do the same thing he did with Hoshi no Koe. Hoshi no Koe was 30 min short exploring the theme of "long distance love." Being a short film it really didn't have much of a plot, nor did it attempt to. The Place of Promise in our Early Days on the other hand seemed like it was going to explore a theme like Hoshi no Koe did yet the same time try to tell a concrete story. This produced a horribly paced movie. First its going nice and slow producing this calm nostalgic feel. Then things move too fast and you're wondering what happened. Essentially the pace is too fast and too slow all at once. The movie should have only been 50 minutes at most. Interestingly enough was what was originally planned out to be. I felt this was a very good 50 min OVA, then scenes were made longer and added extra stuff (ie the sci-fi stuff) to make this mediocre 90 min movie. Because of the lack of focus the characters suffered quite a bit. Their relationships weren’t explored enough nor did I feel there was any depth to them. In addition, I wasn’t convinced of the love between Sayuri and Hiroki. Once again they didn’t spend enough time on the characters. The Place of Promise in our Early Days is a beautifully animated film with lush and vivid detailed. However, it sometimes suffers from being too clean and vivid, giving it that new shinny kitchen appliance look. The music was excellent but not memorable. The Place of Promise in our Early Days suffer fatally from its poor pacing that makes the movie feel too fast and too slow at the same time.

This film gets 5/10, because it's almost exactly one half of a perfect film. Let's start with the good parts and get them over and done with. The artistry is outstanding. Sound design is great. Character animation is only average, but that's plainly not the creator's focus so that doesn't matter. You can write pages and pages on how painterly Shinkai's work is, how any single frame of the film can be picked out and put on the wall as a work of genuine art. But. A film needs more than that to be an actual film. It needs a story, and believable characters, and this is wherethe film really falls down. The primary motivations, and actions of the characters may be convenient for framing the scenes Shinkai shows us, but on closer examination, simply fails to make sense. Let's pick out one character. Okabe, the mentor to our main protagonists. We learn that he was separated from his family in Ezo by the separation, which led to him becoming a terrorist leader to fight the Union. So, his whole plan then is to strike at the Tower. Then when the heroes come to him, he lets them fly the missile and destroy the tower instead, after they show him their 'determination'. Wait what? How could a man whose entire life is lived due to the separation from his family agree to an operation which stands a high chance of destroying the entire world and by the end of the film, probably actually killed his entire family? That gigantic hole in Ezo isn't just for show. Why would he put everything into the single basket of the experimental plane built by a couple of highschoolers? Why can't they fly the UAV as well as the plane? Look closely and the entire substance of the show is cardboard. Characters react to the start of WWII - with an unprovoked declaration of war by the US on the Union with total apathy, instead of, well, horror. The US declare war because of the Tower, but don't actually mount any direct attacks on it. The security on a classified research facility in which rests a woman whose staying asleep keeps the entire world in existence is surmounted by a single guy with a broken arm and a stolen keycard. The Union scientist who designed the tower decides for no apparent reason to make a device - at enormous expense - that will either destroy the world, or send his granddaughter into a coma, *and then* destroy the world when she dies. Look at the frames of this film, and you're notice an interesting thing. The characters are rarely in the middle of the image. They flit in and out, hang around the peripheries, slanted or small. Sometimes their voices are silenced. Sometimes they just aren't there at all. It's like they are just guests, lucky children given a chance to play with the director's fabulous fabulous toys. Shinkai needs a writer. Needs one badly. Z.

I have very mixed feelings about Shinkai Makoto's work. On one hand, he really impressed me with Garden of Words, but on the other hand he really disappointed me with 5 centimeters per second, so i didn't know what to expect from this movie. So after sitting throught the longest 1 hour and a half of my life, i concluded that this movie is even WORSE than 5 centimeters per second. Before you start posting mean stuff on my accound, just try and read my review. It should be less painful than watching the actual movie. Story: 2/10 I can't even begin to explain how bad thestory was handled. Let's start with the pacing. Saying it was really slow is a huge understatement. This movie was incredibly boring. The thing that bugged me the most about the pacing is how every single scene starts and ends very abruptly, right in the middle of the "action" (if such thing exists in this movie), giving little to no information about what is going on, so it comes out as pointless, uninteresting and incomplete. Regarding the plot, it was very poorly explained. It's about some nations fighting and two guys wanting to build an airplane and take this girl to a certain tower, and the people controlling the tower try to overwrite this universe with a parallel one. The whole concept of parallel universes is very interesting, of course, but it wasn't explored enough. I couldn't feel the scale of the conflict, because the focus of the movie was constantly shifting between poorly developed plot points. There was even a poor attempt at a plot twist, which felt like it was pulled out of the producers' a-holes and just dumped on us. In fact, everything in this movie is just dumped on the audience. There is no anticipation, no introduction to anything, and that is unacceptable when you're trying to tell such a story. Characters: 2/10 Another major problem i have with this movie are the characters. Bland, boring, emotionless, one-dimentional, poorly developed, forgettable, and the list could go on if my english vocabulary was larger. I did not care at all about any of the craracters or their motivations. The 3 main craracters (whose names i'm not even gonna mention because i'm too lazy to look them up) get an awfully small amount of screen time, which leads to the inexistence of any character development whatsoever. Their backstories are incomplete and their motivations are unclear. We know WHAT they want to do, but we never find out WHY. I also realised there's a cliche present in Makoto's movies: at the beginning, we hear the main character's thoughts in a vey low and melancholic voice, as they're trying to make me care about them, but it ends up being annoying and making me care even less. It is just a cheap way of characterization that doesn't work at all for me. Animation: 9/10 The movie was really beautiful, just like Makoto's other works. The colors, the shadows, the tones, the outlines, everything blends in perfectly. the only thing that was lacking a bit were the character designs. Their faces seemed a bit too simple to fit in the beautifully animated setting. It's a real shame that this is more or less the only good thing about this movie. A perfect example of how great animation DOES NOT make a good anime. Sound: 7/10 The soundtrack was beautiful and fit the overall tone of the movie, even though it was almost inexistent during some scenes. the main problem i have is with the voice acting. I usually don't talk about this, but the voices of some characters were really inexpressive, to the point of becoming annoying, and just added to their already bland and boring personalities. Enjoyment: 2/10 Did i enjoy this movie? Heck, no! I am actually proud of myself for managing to sit through it. Many times i thought of just dropping it (yes, DROPPING a freaking movie), but i kept telling myself that i have to finish it, that maybe something will happen. In the end it just left me utterly disappointed and almost dead of boredom. Overall: 3/10 If you are a fan of Shinkai Makoto, you will probably check this movie out, and you will probably enjoy it as well. I just don't understand what people find so good about it. It was a poor attempt at telling a deep story, and i just cringed at its inability to make me care about it. The only good thing was the animation, but sadly that is not enought to redeem such a bad movie. I highly recommend you do not waste your time with "The place promised in our early days".