Title: Kumo no mukô, yakusoku no basho
Alternate International Title: The Place Promised in Our Early Days
By: Peter C. Bowen and Charlie Prince
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Official Web Site: www.kumonomukou.com
Trailer:
“The Place Promised in Our Early Days,” which premiered last week in New York, is the first feature film by director Makoto Shinkai, who made a name for himself with the nearly home-made short film Voices of a Distant Star. The two works share similar themes of love and loneliness, and together suggest that a new name, possibly a new king, in animé filmmaking has arrived.

Animé is an intriguing genre of film, and we should disclose upfront that neither of us are deeply familiar with this genre – we’ve seen all of the major landmarks (Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis, Vampire Hunter D, Metropolis, Ninja Scroll, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away etc.) but have not delved into the more obscure titles. That said, Shinkai has brought a new level of sophistication and maturity in terms of the content of his films, which distinguish them from the better known landmarks. The light-hearted silliness that often ties the genre to a younger audience, and obvious attempts to map plots to teenage male fantasies of women have been replaced with a genuinely tender and mature look at a young couple who fall in love and are separated by career ambitions. These themes pervade both the short and the film – Shinkai has created unabashed love stories, more forlorn than full of joy, but still sweet and charming. In so doing, the works have the potential to reach a much broader audience and raise the genre as a whole to be taken more seriously as an art form. In so doing, Shinkai continues down the path started by Miyazaki with the equally elevated Spirited Away. But there the similarities end, as Shinkai’s characters live in a grayer, more serious world than the brighter, fantasyland adventures in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Shinkai is definitely worth seeing, and marks an important step in the evolution of this genre of film.

Voices of a Distant Star (Hoshi no koe)
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Runtime: 25 minutes

Plot: High school students Mikako and Noboru are separated when Mikako becomes a pilot in Earth’s defense forces. Earth is battling the mysterious and formidable Tarsians, using Neon Genesis-like robots to fight epic battles in space. Mikako keeps in touch with Noboru as best she can with text messages from her mobile phone. However, as the Earth forces pursue the Tarsians further into space, the text messages take longer and longer to reach Noboru, who remains back on Earth. Their loneliness is three-fold: they remain separated at greater and greater distances, they grow increasingly apart in age as Mikako ages slower the farther she goes into space and they grow apart in their work, as Mikako relays messages of epic battles to save civilization to Noboru, who works mundane jobs in a normal life back in Japan. Eventually Mikako is so many light years away from Earth that she is still only 15, while Noboru has aged into his 20’s and is preparing for a career in the defense forces.

While there is action in this film the emphasis is on the loneliness Mikako and Noboru feel as the light years between them grow. Shinkai draws out familiar themes of unattainable love and loneliness with an original voice that is far removed from the traditional canon of animé films listed above. Noboru has to endure longer and longer periods of silence from his love and Mikako is completely isolated in her giant robot space craft. While Mikako may send text messages one day after another it could still be years between messages for Noboru. Shinkai creates an atmosphere of contemplation and almost a meditation on the loneliness of Mikako and Noboru. This is the heart of the film.

Do not watch this movie looking for lots of action and butt kicking giant robots and aliens. There are space battles but they are more of a backdrop to the emotional lives of Mikako and Noboru. There is not a drop of Nerd-boy fantasy fulfillment in this film. The characters are well thought out and given real inner lives. In fact, it’s easy to think of this movie in terms of a serious film to the point that one could forget about the animation. That would be a shame because the animation is beautiful. The characters are rendered without the usual cliché’s of anime and the framing of the shots imparts much of the emotional atmosphere. There is also a seamless blending of CG and traditional animation made all the more impressive by the fact that it is basically home made.

Overall Voices of a Distant Star is a good introduction to Makoto Shinkai’s style of anime film making. It’s not perfect; it can drag in bits even though it is only 25 minutes long. The constant voice over can be a bit taxing but is effective enough as a storytelling device. Shinkai approaches his subjects with seriousness and an earnestness that is refreshing in an anime film and shows promise for better work to come.

The Place Promised in Our Early Days (Kumo no muko, yakusaku no basho)
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Runtime: 91 minutes
Theatrical premier May 10 at Tribeca Grand Hotel, NYC; major cities to follow
DVD release Summer 2005

The Place Promised in Our Early Days is the story of three teenagers, Takuya, Sayuri, and Hiroki, set in an alternate timeline. In this world Japan is divided. Hokkaido is ruled by The Union and is the enemy of Honshu and the southern islands of Japan which are controlled by the U.S. There is a cold war of sorts persisting between North and South. The Union has constructed a tower so tall that it can be seen from Tokyo on clear days. Little is known about the tower, which takes on magic or even religious symbolism in the film – it is an enormous power they do not understand. Some feel the Tower is a weapon to be used against the south but nobody knows for sure.

Takuya and Hiroki are best friends going to school in the shadow of the Tower and both are fascinated by it. They are determined to find out what is going on in the tower and to this end Takuya and Hiroki get summer jobs at a factory in order to get parts and learn the engineering involved in building an airplane. The boys plan to build an aircraft capable of flying to the Tower so that the two of them can unravel the mystery of its purpose. As a centerpiece in the ongoing war, and strictly off-limits to all civilians, the audacity of what the boys aspire to do forces them to act in secret.

The typically awkward school boys are aware of the girls they encounter but don’t really know how to talk to them. Despite this they both befriend Sayuri when one of the boys invites her to come to the factory to see their, until now, secret aircraft building project. Spending much of the summer together, the boys tell Sayuri of their plan to go to the tower and the three of them promise to all go together when they finish the airplane.

Life does not go as planned for the trio. As time goes by, the aircraft remains unfinished and as they graduate from school they also drift apart. Sayuri disappears altogether, and the boys are hurt that she didn’t warn them or say goodbye. Takuya continues in his obsession over the Tower, going on to work for the government monitoring it. In contrast, Hiroki moves to Tokyo to get away from the Tower and the painful loss of Sayuri. Although it is nearly ready for flight, the airplane project is abandoned.

Our stars are not the only ones interested in the Tower, however, and in a series of high-level government meetings, we come to learn that the Tower has started to display disturbing signs that it may indeed be a weapon to be used against the South. It seems to be displacing an increasing area of space-time and replacing it with space-time from some parallel universe. Takuya and the scientist he works with are searching for the mechanism with which the Tower displaces its surroundings. Through this research they correlate the Tower’s activities with patterns of wakefulness of a mystery girl.

Sayuri is haunted by a recurring dream and sinks deeper into sleep until she is in a coma for three years (which, unknown to the boys, accounts for her sudden disappearance). In the three years she has slept the Tower has been silent. The scientists take her to a research facility to study her in an attempt to uncover the key to the Tower. The psychic link between Sayuri and Hiroki is strong, however, and he is drawn to her. He discovers a resurging need within him to fulfill the promise the three friends made long ago, and sets out to reunite the three friends to accomplish this task.

Analysis:

This is the first feature length film by Makoto Shinkai and fulfills the promise made by his previous short films. The animation is mesmerizing, but takes a back seat to the story itself. The framing (often used to show only reflections of characters, or parts of them, like their feet) is used to impart the emotional atmosphere of the characters and the sense of foreboding of the Tower and its effects on the people in its shadow.

Like Voices of a Distant Star the emphasis of this story is the loneliness and alienation of the characters. This is not an action movie or a comedy, it’s a love story, plain and simple. Although there are some scenes of action, they are minor devices used to move the plot along in a way to better understand the characters of our stars. Shinkai is obviously talented at giving his characters a real and believable inner life. These are not two dimensional “cartoon” characters. They feel like real people. Shinkai is also good at avoiding the fantasy fulfillment that seems to pervade most anime.

It is difficult to think of The Place Promised in Our Early Days as a traditional animé movie – it stands up to the standards of a serious film. Shinkai is obviously serious about his subject matter and successfully brings out a true emotional response beyond just cool visuals. The press release for the film says Shinkai has been referred to as “the new Miyazaki” but we think this is unfair to both Shinkai and Miyazaki. They are exploring very different worlds even though they both work in animation. The comparison is apt only insofar as both directors are good at giving genuine emotion to their characters.

The Place Promised in Our Early Days is definitely worth seeing. It is a contemplative and fairly slow paced film but the characters are interesting and one can easily be drawn into their world. Again, if you’re looking for comedy or action this is not the film for you. For everyone else, we recommend the film heartily — this movie approaches itself seriously and stands up to its high standards.

Copyright 2005 Charlie Prince