Noein: Mou Hitori no Kimi e

During their last summer of elementary school, four friends decide to undertake a test of courage at their local graveyard. Before the test begins, Haruka Kaminogi makes a last effort to pull Yuu Gotou away from his controlling mother. While doing so, Haruka suddenly has a strange vision of blue snow followed by the appearance of an imposing silver-haired man. Later, a similar vision occurs at the graveyard to both Haruka and her friends before they try to escape what they assume are ghosts.

Unbeknownst to the children, the people who appeared before them are Dragon Soldiers: an elite military group from a dimension known as La'cryma. The soldiers have traveled to this dimension to secure the "Dragon Torque"—an entity they believe to be their last hope for survival. However, both the Dragon Soldiers and Haruka are shocked to learn that the Dragon Torque is Haruka herself. She attempts to escape from the Dragon Soldiers as she finds her own last ray of hope—the strange silver-haired man who claims to be another version of Yuu himself.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Karasu Main

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Kaminogi, Haruka Main

Kudou, Haruka Japanese

Gotou, Yuu Main

Takimoto, Fujiko Japanese

Noein Main

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Atori ing

Suzumura, Kenichi Japanese

Tobi ing

Shiraishi, Ryouko Japanese

Fujiwara, Isami ing

Miyata, Kouki Japanese

Fukurou ing

Kiyasu, Kouhei Japanese

Lily ing

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Hasebe, Ai ing

Chiba, Saeko Japanese

Yamamori, Atsushi Producer

Kawamura, Hiroshi Producer

Kasai, Tsutomu Producer

Akane, Kazuki Director, Episode Director, Script, Storyboard, Creator, Series Composition

Reviews

Jan 10, 2023

Purjoloek

Recommended

Noein: Mou Hitori no Kimi e is a lovely little show revolving around a group of children who have their world changed by invaders from a foreign dimension. The easiest parallel I can give you is that it's basically an anime cousin of Stranger Things.

The series focuses on the relationship between Haruka and Yuu. Both come from more or less broken families and have been friends since they met. Haruka is outgoing and friendly, while familial circumstances and social pressure has turned Yuu into a loner who wants nothing more than to grow up and leave town. Haruka is also a being called the Dragon ... Torque, which grants her certain (limited) reality-bending powers, that make her the target for a group of foreign invaders from the world of La'cryma - invaders that have surprisingly strong ties to them and their group of friends. Haruka forms a quick and deep connection with one of them called Karasu, who seems intent on protecting her.

Noein shines when it focuses on the kids and their reactions to the wild events of the story, as well as Haruka and Yuu's relationship with Karasu. Haruka struggles to connect with Yuu on a deeper level, and Yuu finds it hard to measure up to the fully grown and capable protector that is Karasu. The kids are all likeable and have relatable struggles with their connections to each-other and growing up.

The series starts to struggle a bit when it opens up the wold a bit more and showing you different vantage points of the whole story. While parts of them are interesting - that is, the parts that aren't complete pseudoscience gobbledegook - they take away from the heart of the series which is the children themselves. Similar to how a horror villain/monster often gets less scary the more is revealed about them, here the story gets more and more bogged down with uninteresting detail that isn't directly relevant to the children (as in, they don't need to know about quantum bullshit to progress the story) and takes more and more screen time away from the actual interesting parts of the story, which are mainly the relationships.

There are several adult characters that show up and explain the circumstances of the setting to the viewers, but they are rarely very interesting and their stories are often more than a bit disconnected from the core of the show. There's also a fair bit of politics about capitalism in the series that aren't exactly bad, but just feel like they come from a completely different show. There's even a sort-of Elon Musk stand in, who initially feels to cartoonish - until you realise it's a pretty accurate caricature of a childing billionaire who wants to the THE GUY without knowing his stuff. Ultimately he's such a tonal mismatch to the show that he feels wasted. The stakes that are attempted to be raised by the adult storyline doesn't really matter when positioned next to the central storyline and its events.

Speaking of adults, it's plain to see the effects that Haruka and Yuu's mothers have had on their lived. Yuu's father is abscent and Haruka's father lives in Tokyo so they both have single mothers. Yuu's mother is presented as the bad one, and she certainly is horrible. She wants him to study hard so he can go to a prestigious school in Tokyo, while struggling with her past and taking things out on Yuu, pressuring him to perform and isolating him from his friends. Haruka's mum is framed as the better parent, but this falters a bit when you shine a light on her behaviour. She basically locks herself away and works from home all day long. She sleeps in and doesn't take care of herself that well, to the point where Haruka has to cook and clean for her. In a way, it's not too bad for Haruka to develop some independence while young, but it's plain to see that being on her own without real limits and parental teaching has affected her emotional intelligence and she struggles to understand many of the relationships around her, and is reckless with her own personal freedom and self-sacrificing to a fault. It's especially evident how unreliable Haruka's parent is during one event where Haruka is missing and her friends are out searching for her together with their teacher. At no point during that event is Haruka's mother ed to assist in the search or even be informed of her daughter's disappearance. The assumption lands at nobody really trusting her with auch responsibility.

Onto the aesthetic stuff: The voice acting is mostly very good, and has to do a lot of heavy lifting. Some performers are a bit miscast, such as the very recognisable Nakai Kazuya as Karasu who doesn't work very well with that part, imo. The music in the show in general is lovely and services the story well. The sweeping, orchestral score gives the exciting scenes way more of an impact. The art is generally pretty horrible, I'm sad to say. At times the barebones animation can work well, but the show is honestly quite ugly a lot of the time. Especially a few episodes in as the production quality takes an absolute nosedive.

All in all, I think it's certainly a show well worth watching, and one I recommend.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 4, 2024

SuperNinKenDo

Mixed Feelings

A very rough cut gem that will appeal to some, and not to others.

This series is the imperfect attempt at a magnum opus of one Kazuki Akane, someone who has been involved extensively with many fantastic and well known works, essentially a who's-who list of big name titles for anyone of a certain generation of anime enthusiast. However, his involvement has often been one of medium-to-high-impact but low-visibility, with the exception of his involvement with 'Escaflowne' in which he was deeply and somewhat more visibly involved. This series, however, is one of only two of Akane's work on which he can be said to have ... his shot at becoming a true auteur (the other being Heat Guy J, which I am yet to see).

It is impossible to evaluate Noein without this kind of meta awareness of Akane's career trajectory I believe. Right down to his frequent credits as a storyboard artist, which clearly influenced the odd, but effective way that the series blends disparate and incompatible animation styles in a very self-conscious and intentional way. Much of the action involves animation that seems more like detailed colourings of storyboards somebody left out (think a less experimental version of 'Kid's Story' from 'The Animatrix'), while effective use of 3D animation is made to accentuate the weird and alien quality of certain settings, characters and objects. Rather than attempt the kind of blending that was typical of this time period, which neither looked particularly good to contemporary eyes, nor aged well, Akane's use of various animation styles ages all the better in not attempting to fool the viewer, but rather achieve artistic and thematic effect. I spend so much time on this minor point because the inconsistency in the animation is something which I have seen repeatedly mentioned in negative reviews here, and I so I feel this is worth spending some times emphasising.

That being said, the animation does have its issues. The more orthodox animated segments can be.... rough. The style between characters is inconsistent in a way that never quite stopped feeling jarring and uncanny. I don't know if this was an intentional choice, as the character of Haruka, around whom every character and the entire storyline revolve, for better or for worse, is obviously the greatest example of odd and inconsistent character design and animation. But if it is intentional, it is hard for me to understand its exact purpose.

More broadly, the narrative and characters really make you work very hard... This series feels like panning for gold, and although you do find it with some regularity, it can feel like labouring under a hot sun without any guarantees at times. Partly, I stuck with the series simply because it was a series which somebody with whom I am close with emphasised its personal importance to them so strongly, however there were also moments when after some teeth pulling, the series really did pay off in such a way that I felt my investment was being rewarded. This kind of pattern covers everything from understanding or caring about the narrative, character development, interactions, and relationships, and action sequences. This is most definitely an exemplar of the classic trope of the anime your friend tells you to just watch 6 more episodes and they promise it will get good.

It is only a certain kind of person I think who will enjoy or be glad to have watched this series, and that is, returning to my initial point, the type of person for whom experiencing a glimpse inside the mind of a great craftsman who never managed to fully become an artist is something they will appreciate. Someone who likes to see the imperfection of someone trying and just about succeeding, to do something different and fully their own.

The series ultimately explores some interesting themes, and returning to my panning for gold metaphor, the hard work of enduring some of the more insufferable character moments are precisely set ups for important and far more interesting character development later down the line. The character of Yuu for example is an utter misery for at least the first half of the series if not more, but it is precisely this total unlikeability that pays off so well at the 11th hour in understanding both the motivation for the entire plot, and delivering a core part of the series' philosophical reflection.

I've written a lot here that can honestly be summed up succinctly by the very first sentence of this review, and so I will not belabour the point too much further, however to reiterate, this series is one for those who want to watch something imperfect, but sincere, and genuinely unique. While there are clear influences from works like 'Neon Genesis Evangelion', 'Rahxephon', 'Escaflowne', and perhaps even 'Serial Experiments Lain', this series is definitely something not quite like anything I've seen before. However it will test your patience at times, even if you're the kind of person who gets a kick out of the off-kilter. Yet there was something that kept me coming back, and I am in fact glad to have experienced everything it had to offer. It truly was something different, and by the end of the series I found myself surprisingly attached to some of the characters and the outcome of the story, not to mention the very interesting way it explored SciFi concepts like quantum entanglement and instability, multi-universe theories and such.

If you haven't been turned off by this review, I really do suggest giving this series a shot, I promise it gets good after just like 8 more episodes bro, please bro, just trust me bro I mean it!

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Apr 25, 2021

lethargilistic

Not Recommended

Tiresome. Utterly tiresome.

In ~2008, I staying up until like midnight on Monday nights in order to watch this on the Sci Fi Channel's AniMonday block. Looking back on it now, I feel so...cheated out of the 30 minutes of sleep I could have gotten instead of this, though this obviously wasn't the only show playing on those nights. At the time, I had dial-up internet and I didn't know how to watch whatever anime I wanted, so I was limited to whatever got dubbed and made it onto TV. And this did. We were so deprived.

It's kind of hard to describe exactly why I ... hated this so much, because the show itself is hard to describe, but that's kind of the problem. It's hard to describe any overarching thing about it, but any individual thing isn't merely simple, but lifelessly boring. Instead of injecting any kind of humanity into those moments, it starts papering over them with incomprehensible prattle about quantum states, and only doubles down on that more and more as the show goes on. Nothing really matters. There are several versions of almost every character, and none of them is really consequential. There's a whole side plot about these two investigative characters and Haruka's father that goes almost nowhere plot-wise or thematically.

And it just goes on, and on, and on... There are many shows that deserved multiple cours. I cannot understand how or why this show, of all shows, got two.

The art style probably looks good on paper. I'd believe you if you said the concept art for this show was particularly nice. But it's so inconsistent in motion and the early digital color job flattens everything. It's so ugly most of the time.

This is one of those shows where the top reviews are so glowing because they're from shortly after the show came out and were probably written by the first wave of teenagers who used MyAnimeList. Don't believe their hype. Those people didn't have good taste yet.

Noein does not deserve a look back, even if you vaguely it from back in the day. The person who directed this also directed Escaflowne, and I strongly recommend checking that out instead if you somehow stumbled across Noein first.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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