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Posted by Duane on Friday, July 01, 2005 @ 00:00:00 Mountain Daylight Time

The Place Promised In Our Early Days is the creation of Makoto Shinkai, and tells the story of three friends who...actually, I guess I should start with a little back story. In 1974 Japan split into the north and the south. The north is still called Japan, while the south is now known as the Union Territory, which included Hokkaido. Families were split, just as the country split. No one was allowed to cross from one side to the other. Some time shortly after the split, a physicist in the Union named Ekusun Tsukinoe proved the existence of parallel universes. He began construction on a massive tower that was so tall, it could be seen from incredible distances. In 1996, the tower was completed. The Union was far ahead of Japan and the rest of the world in this multiple universe research, and the Japanese and the Americans were desperately trying to catch up, as they felt it might be a way to look into the future, so they could make decisions now based on what the current timeline's future showed them.

Two middle school aged friends, Hiroki Fujisawa and Takuya Shirikawa have watched this tower for years, and had become quite obsessed with it. Both of them were extremely advanced for their ages, and began construction on a highly advanced two-seater aircraft that they would fly into the Ezo Territory so they could finally have an up close look at the object that has possessed their very souls as far back as they could remember. During the years they spend constructing the plane, a girl named Sayuri Sawatari entered the picture. Hiroki secretly loves her, and she ends up coming with them to the abandoned hangar where they're building their plane, the Bella Ciela. Hiroki promises her that someday when they're finished, he'll take her to see the tower.

Time passed, and eventually Sawatari disappeared, and neither boy knew what had happened to her. Eventually they go their separate ways without ever completing the plane they had obsessed over for years. Sawatari in fact had fallen into a deep sleep, and now three years had passed without her waking up, and the two boys went off to different high schools.

Eventually it's discovered that Sawatari's sleep and her dreams are related to the tower somehow. Every time she starts to wake up just slightly, the tower activates and a small amount of the area around it is replaced with matter from an alternate universe. The scientists keep her asleep to keep this from happening, and it's only later, after Hiroki begins to meet Sawatari in his dreams, that he finally begins to understand what's happening. She's recieving information from alternate universes and her brain can't handle it, so she sleeps. Stuck in one of the alternate universes, seeing the dreams of the universe. Hiroki knows that the only way to get Sawatari to wake up is to get her to the tower. Unfortunately, taking her to the tower and waking her up will cause the tower to activate and potentially destory the world.

During the years that passed, Shirikawa had joined a research facility that was working on the multiple universe theories. They discovered Sawatari's link to the tower and understood what would happen if she were to awaken. Also during these years, Shirikawa became involved with a group called Uilta. They had one goal and one goal only, and that was to destroy the tower. The rest of the film revolves around Hiroki and Takuya trying to get Sawatari to the tower to wake her up, and then ultimately destroying it.

While this movie does have beautiful animation and artwork, I found the story considerably lacking. It kept jumping forward in time, covering a span of over three years, while failing to provide some very needed back story details that would have helped the whole thing to make a lot more sense. When taken as a whole, it does eventually make sense to some degree, the lack of details throughout the first half of the movie leaves you feeling like something is missing.

The way the story jumps around from time to time and the way people change over the course of that time makes you wonder why they changed the way they did and what events shaped them. None of this is really covered in depth, if it's ever covered at all. With the multiple universes thing and the whole thing with Japan splitting into two separate entities back in 1974, I was wondering if this whole thing was actually taking place in a parallel universe. The story would have been much better served if it had taken place in the future where such an occurrence would be possible. Setting the split back in 1974 makes you feel like it's not taking place in our universe at all. And truth be told, it may not be, but they're never really clear about that.

In a way, this is actually a coming of age story between the three friends. On that level it works pretty well, as you get to watch them in their early years when their dreams were like a ripe fruit, ready to be tasted if they only had the courage to reach out and grab it. Then as time passes, you see how jaded they've become with the disappearance of Sawatari and the loss of the dreams that filled their hearts with joy when they were younger.

This leaves me somewhat torn as to how I feel about this film. The coming of age story and the relationship between the three friends worked, while the whole story with Sawatari being linked to the tower and the whole thing with Japan splitting and Japan and the Americans going to war against the Union Territories didn't really work all that well due to lacking details. We do find out late in the film that Ekusun Tsukinoe, the man who built the tower, was actually Sawatari's grandfather that she had never met. Yet still nothing was explained about why or how she was linked to it. These lacking details hurt what could have otherwise been a very enjoyable film.

Did I like this film? Well now that it's over and I understand a little better what was going on, I'd have to say that I did in fact like it, although it's not going to rank up there as one of my all time favorites. The voice acting was quite good, the artwork and animation were both great, but the story just left me wanting. The film was 91 minutes long, but I feel as though a considerable amount of that was wasted on unimportant events rather than telling the details of the story that would have made it more enjoyable. I know a lot of people absolutely love this film and will probably accuse me of just not understanding it or not being able to appreciate what a great film it really is. Maybe that's the case, maybe it isn't. But my job as a reviewer is to tell you all what my reaction to a film is, and to be honest about it. Some will agree with me, some won't. Such is the way of the world. I did like this film. I'd be lying if I said I didn't, but I had a hard time following the story, and in the end I just ended up feeling like it could have been more than it was.

If you'd like to find out more about this film or check out some of ADV's other releases, you can head on over to the ADV website at http://www.advfilms.com. The DVD is available through all the usual outlets.