To Every You I've Loved Before

 To Every You I've Loved Before (僕が愛したすべての君へ) is a sci-fi romance movie based on the novel of the same name by Otono Yomoji.  The movie was initially released in theaters in Japan in 2022.

    Takasaki Koyomi is at the end of his life, enjoying the last of his days at home, surrounded by his family, as he faces an advanced terminal illness.  One day, waking to find he still lives, he receives a reminder of a meeting he does not remember setting.  The meeting only tells him to go to a certain intersection later in the morning.  He mentions the meeting to his wife over breakfast, who also knows nothing about it, and she encourages him to go see what it may be about.  At the time and place, unsure what to expect, he notices a young girl in a dress standing in the crosswalk.  She reaches out her hand, a smile on her face.  As he reaches out and grasps her hand with his she fades into nothingness and he is forced to retreat from the intersection before traffic moves again.

    As a child, scientists had proven that parallel worlds exist and his father was at the center of its research.  With every decision a person makes in their life, big or small, another reality separates from the primary one, leading to more and more branches and more and more differences the further one reality gets from another.  Around the age of 7, Koyomi's parents divorce and he chooses to live with his mother at her parents home.  After turning 8, his father gifts him an air soft gun, which his grandfather swiftly confiscates after seeing him point it at the family dog.  Koyomi, upset by the punishment, claims the he will never speak to his grandfather again.  Unfortunately, the declaration comes true when his grandfather suddenly passes away.

 

    Dealing with the grief of losing his grandfather on bad terms leads to his first noticeable shift into a world far away from his.  He wakes up inside of a capsule in a large room, the only other occupant being a girl his age in a dress.  He begs her to let him out, but when she does, she runs away, leaving him confused.  Lost and alone, he calls his mother to pick him up.  Without understanding, he has shifted into a world in which he chose to live with his father.  His mother brings him back to her parents house, where he is astonished and relieved to see his grandfather still alive.  In the evening, confused and alarmed, he is able to reconcile with his grandfather, before he returns to the world he knows.

    Life is lonely for Koyomi, who, through the brilliance of his father, is able to succeed in school with ease, causing a rift between he and his peers.  In middle school he decides to work at being more accepted, declining the offer to give a speech in front of the school as their representative.  He wants to remain in the background, doing what he can to shield his differences from them, in order to gain companions.  His effort was for naught though as he still remains a loner, which puts him in an awkward position when one of the girls in his grade approaches him one day after school.  The girl, Takigawa Kazune, tells him that she found her self shifted into his world and that they are a couple where she comes from.  She lays out the details to him, backing it up with an experimental device she's wearing, that he is familiar with, showing she is from 85 iterations away.  A distance that far between their worlds should mean drastic differences, but somehow the only thing that seems different is Koyomoi's personality.  She tells him to forget about their conversation and to carry on like they never talked, expecting to shift back to her version of their world eventually.

    Koyomi can't get what Kazune told him out of his mind, stewing on it while he wonders if the version of her from his reality has returned or not.  He gathers up the courage and asks her to meet him at the karaoke bar so he can broach the subject to her, to see what she knows and to see if this version of her might have feelings for him.  She struggles to keep her secret from him for too long, following his confession and revels that she never was from a far of world, faking the readout of her watch.  She rejects his confession to her and returns to her normal existence of ignoring him.  As time goes on though, they begin to interact with each other more and more at school, which leads to a strained friendship and Koyomi continuing to ask her out as the years go by, from middle school, into high school and into college.

    The top students in school, they both decided to attend the same college, the first of its kind in the world offering courses in the emerging sciences around studying parallel worlds. Both are able to get internships and eventually jobs at the research institute Koyomi's father has worked at for years.  Eventually Kazune's refusal of him wears away and they become a couple, though that waxes and wanes as the head strong and opinionated Kazune struggles with Koyomi's passiveness and ambivalence...some would say he lacked human emotions.  Eventually they get married and take over the big house his grandparents had once lived in, building a new generation with the birth of their child Ryou.  But things are never as happy as one would hope.  As time moves along emotions and wishes from close by parallel worlds begin to seep into the couples banal live, threatening its stability and security.  Leading to the strange appointment at the end of his life and the mysterious girl in the crosswalk.

    I must apologize for how much of the story I have spoiled in the overview...but don't worry, it really only covers about half of the story, there is still plenty of mystery and suspense to uncover as well as the finer details in what was covered.  This is a very melancholy and reflective story, that puts a lot of focus on things that are lost and things that may never come to pass.  It plays heavily with the idea that people slip back and forth between the parallel worlds closest to them all of the time, usually with out notice.  In those slips does one really know if the person they are interacting with is close enough to their version that the lost moments don't matter?  Koyomi questions that over the course of his courtship and eventual life with Kazune, wondering if the woman in front of him at certain pivotal moments is the one he knows or not.  How far away can you move from your version of reality without having drastic effects on those around you and how they perceive you?

    The story tackles that head on in three major plot points, the first being the loss of his grandfather at the age of 8.  The other two would spoil important aspects of the story, but one of them does revolve around the mysterious girl at the intersection.  Unfortunately that plot point feels largely out of place with the overall narrative of the story, a story that focuses on the time Koyomi spends with Kazune over the years.  After all of the exposition around these two, fated lovers, we are thrown a secondary plot line, that tries to make its self the primary plot line, forcing up back to the beginning of the story and Koyomi's first noticeable shift.  The bulk of the narration ignores both of these specifics until we see him at the last stages of his life and the mysterious girls existence forcibly reinserts its self into the story.  Leading to a resolution of the first segment and some forced explaining and weird concepts.  But...maybe you can approach the awkward last portion of the story as a distraction from what really matters in the story, the unwavering love of the two main characters, regardless of differences in other worlds.  Perhaps the idea of the strange shift to the mystery girl is to reinforce that no matter how far you get away from the core reality, love transcends and works to break through.

I am probably working to hard to make up for the terrible shift in focus of the story and its over all lack of plot when it comes down to it.  Outside of the mystery girl there is little in the way of an engaging plot.  The movie really feels like nothing more than world building centered around an endearing and sometimes tragic relationship.  A speculative exercise in what it would mean on a personal, day to day, level if we were able to meaningfully interact with parallel offshoots of our own reality and the implications of such a feat on our personal every day lives.  Yet does that really lead to good story telling instead of some pot induced retrospection?  Hard to say.  But, the movie was enjoyable in its own right.  It really does lack a lot of the substance and drive that one would expect to find in a movie or book.  There is little rhyme or reason behind what happens, other than to show case the two lovers as they navigate each others personality and the concepts of reality around them.  The actual plot behind the mystery girl seemed like a pointless attempt to create a more solidified idea of the story.  In the end the attempts to codify that as the actual point of the entire thing was too little too late, too forced, with some hand waving explanations in the end that all together didn't add up to much.

   Did I enjoy this oddly passive movie?  Yes.  Could it have been better?  Absolutely.  Both in a more meaningful plot to make it appeal to a broader audience and in the character design.  I was not a fan of the characters designs.  Especially the shape of Koyomi's iris'.  It was weird.  There are all sorts of angular.  The artwork in general lacks a lot of the detail one has come to expect with moves from Hosoda or Shinkai, unrealistic expectations from their view point, they set too high a standard for theatrical releases.  You can really tell this was a computer based animation effort, but not in a clunky bad way, just in how generic a lot of the design was in the end.  With all of its short comings; no real plot, a disjointed secondary plot line and less than ideal character design, this was an enjoyable movie.  I wouldn't have been upset seeing it in the theater, but probably won't buy it on Blu-ray.

    The movie is currently available in subtitles format on Crunchyroll.