Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho

Hiroki Fujisawa and Takuya Shirakawa harbor iration for two things in their life: their classmate Sayuri Sawatari and the vast Ezo Tower that stands boundlessly across the Tsugaru Strait. Fascinated by the limitless structure beyond their reach, Hiroki and Takuya begin constructing an aeroplane from a fallen drone they discovered—naming it the Bella Ciela—to fulfill their dream of one day reaching the sky-scraping top of the tower. Later ed by the girl they love, Hiroki and Takuya promise Sayuri to fly with her to the seemingly otherworldly top together. However, Japan has suffered a North-South partitioning that has fueled conflict near the base of the tower, which marks the border between the America-controlled Southern islands and the Northern lands occupied by the Soviet Union.

Further along, Sayuri suddenly disappears, and Hiroki and Takuya never see her again. Unbeknownst to them, she fell victim to a sleeping disorder that left her comatose for the past three years. Although Hiroki and Takuya later learn about Sayuri's condition, they also discover that the girl's unconscious state is oddly linked to the same tower the trio had promised to conquer together.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sawatari, Sayuri Main

Nanri, Yuuka Japanese

Fujisawa, Hiroki Main

Yoshioka, Hidetaka Japanese

Shirakawa, Takuya Main

Hagiwara, Masato Japanese

Okabe ing

Ishizuka, Unshou Japanese

Mizuno, Rika ing

Nakagawa, Rie Japanese

Kasahara, Maki ing

Mizuno, Risa Japanese

Arisaka ing

Kiuchi, Hidenobu Japanese

Tomizawa, Tsuneo ing

Inoue, Kazuhiko Japanese

Shinkai, Makoto Producer, Director, Sound Director, Script, Storyboard, Theme Song Lyrics, Color Design, Original Creator, Executive Producer, Editing

Itou, Kouichirou Producer

Hiramatsu, Kiyonori Producer

Foster, Steven Script, ADR Director

Reviews

Jun 25, 2008

TheLlama

Recommended

The Place Promised starts out with a very tranquil slice of life setting, but don't get fooled by first appearances. It soon takes on a more dramatic tone, with a sense of sci.fi. over it too, depending on which of the two male leads' story it's currently following. With the dreams of the female lead poppign in here and there, you have three fantastic story which grabs you on a deep, emotional level, and it all ends with blending the three together in one splendid end scene, which I'll a long time.

The characters in The Place Promised are fantastic, deep and lifelike. Note the ... latter; they're lifelike. They're just normal kids going through all this, and that helps you to connect with them, you feel like you want them to achieve their dream from the bottom of your heart.

The artwork is a marvel. I'm completely astounded by its quality, especially the lighting and shading, which helps set the tone of the movie; calm, yet dramatic. Background artwork and overall quality are both top-level, so that alone is something to look forward to.

The music is pretty good; some sad and becalming themes blends right into the whole tone of the movie, and they are overall very good.

I enjoyed the movie a great lot, especially because of how you connect with the characters, but also because it presents a mood that is very sad, yet calm. Everything was so peaceful, I felt, even during the short action-packed scenes, and the final scene of the movie was very becalming and very peaceful.

To 'Not Helpful' voters (and you 'Helpful' voters too): greatly appreciated =)

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Apr 4, 2008

slpless

Mixed Feelings

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 interior ... backgrounds. 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 3, 2016

Madness17

Not Recommended

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 the ... story 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".

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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