The Place Promised In Our Early Days

The Place Promised In Our Early Days is a 2004 action, adventure, drama, romance, war, science fiction, science fantasy, Japanese anime movie. It was directed by Makoto Shinkai and Yoshio Suzuki, written by Makoto Shinkai, musically composed by Tenmon, and produced by CoMix Wave Inc.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Amazing animation.
 * 2) Great voice acting in both sub and dub.
 * 3) The story is incredibly emotionally gripping and sad.  Like many of Makoto Shinkai's later films, a kids who are close, whose relationship is splintered by distance and time.
 * 4) Outstanding soundtrack.
 * 5) The best part of the movie is the relationship between Hiroki Fujisawa, Takuya Shirakawa, and Sayuri Sawatari.  It's endearing seeing the three interact with each other and see how their friendship blossoms.
 * 6) Good cinematography.
 * 7) The scene at the end of the movie with Hiroki piloting the plane through the battle as they reach the tower is spectacularly animated and shot and is just intense as hell.
 * 8) Very appealing art style and character designs.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The plot starts pretty self explanatory, but after the time skip it becomes incredibly convoluted.  For some reason Sayuri has been asleep all this time, trapped inside her own mind, and the Soviots built a tower which is connected to Sayuri's mind, and if she wakes up then the whole world will be doomed.  It's way too complicated, pretentious, and lacks even close to enough explanation to be engaging.  The movie should have just focused on the relationship between these three kids, rather than including this crazy pseudo science into the plot.

Reception
The Place Promised In Our Early Days has a 80% critic rating and a 80% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 3.2/5 on Letterboxd, a 7.1/10 on the International Movie Database (IMDB), a 7.75/10 on MyAnimeList, a 75.85% community approval rating on Kitsu, and a 4/5 on AnimePlanet.

Videos
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