A Place Promised in Our Early Days

A Place Promised in Our Early Days is a slice of life, sci-fi, romance by Makoto Shinkai.  This was his first theatrical release and originally played in Japan in 2004.

    In an alternate universe, Japan has been split into a Northern and Southern faction, constantly at a state of war readiness.  On the northern most edge of the Southern faction, Hiroki Fujisawa and Takuya Shirakawa are 3^rd years middle school students who are secretly building an aircraft to fly them to a mysterious tower located across the straights from their home in the Northern territory.  A classmate, and love interest for Hiroki, Sayuri Sawatari becomes interested in their project and they all promise to fly together to see the tower when the plane is finished.  Before they can do that Sayuri disappears and the two friends lose interest in their goal when Hiroki transfers away for high school.  Three years later, Sayuri’s location is still unknown, Hiroki and Takuya are still separated and the factions are on the brink of war.  Something urges Takuya to find his lost love and fulfill the promise to visit the tower.

    This movie was a little disappointing to me.  It wasn’t bad but I have built up such a high expectation for Shinkai’s work that it fell a bit flat.  I really feel this would have been better as a series of episodes, either TV or OAV, than as a movie.  There is quite a lot going on in the world of this movie that seems to be glossed over and only modestly developed.  So much needed to be explained that I don’t feel the characters were developed very well.  I really didn’t have any care for any of the main characters and whether or not they met their goals.  By the end of it I was more interested to see what was going to happen than wishing for any sort of personal outcome.  The animation also fell a little flat for me, at least in the character details.  The backgrounds are still pretty good.  Shinkai has a love for beautifully detailed scenery.  Something about the detail in the characters seemed shabby though and was disappointing.  That being said, this isn’t a bad movie, just less than I expected from one of my favorite directors.  It’s well written, the concepts are interesting, even if parts of it feel like an homage to or theft of Evangelion, but it just falls a little flat in the feeling department.  It really should have been made into a short series with 5 or so episodes in which to really develop the world and the characters more.

    This movie was licensed and released in North America pretty quickly.  The DVD’s are still around but are apparently out of print and may cost a bit more than one would want to spend on it.  It does come bundled with Shinkai’s almost entirely self made, Voices of a Distant Star OAV, which is fantastic and may be worth it alone.