Good concept, poorly executed.

Fantastic!

A Masterpiece!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

While a popular anime, I find that the title (The Place Promised in Our Early Days) is more interesting than the slow, plodding script. Many will find this film unmoving and uneventful.The animation is so-so. In only one scene (a mountain background with mist) was I impressed; otherwise it's very typical. I'm honestly surprised by the number of reviews stating this is "beautiful". It's really simply not that impressive animation-wise. I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. The characters are largely undeveloped. The plot line is simple and mono-directional, without much in the way of suspense, surprise or emotional impact. There are no highs or lows, no real climax to the film, and the ending is weak.I am a fan of anime and very much enjoy artistic anime. I don't need giant robot battles in order to enjoy a film-- and enjoy many aspects of the drama genre where story is as important as the animation itself. But this work struck me as mediocre in all aspects. I do appreciate that some may enjoy the (very)subdued romantic aspect, but I found it as undeveloped and uneventful as the rest of the work.As would be expected I give it 5 stars. Neither impressive nor bad... just a slow-moving story, weak plot line and so-so animation.

I was fully prepared to like this anime, but I really didn't. I stumbled upon this movie watching a list on Youtube about under-appreciated anime, where I also was made aware of Mind Game, which I liked a lot, so I gave this movie a watch, too.Before I start complaining, let's get the positives out of the way: This movie is beautifully animated and some of the backgrounds are a real treat for the eye. For the stuff that bugged me: This movie is really dull. Now I'm fine with slower paced movies, as long as there is something there to hold my interest, but this movie falls flat in terms of character work, world building and story telling in general. Character motivations are underdeveloped or even worse, change on a whim. The conflict parties and their history are only hinted at or even completely omitted. The big reveal in the second half makes absolutely no sense and no effort is made to get some sense into it. The film picks up a bit at the end, but getting that far felt like a chore to me and instead of thinking about what I just saw like I usually do when watching anime movies I just felt glad it was over. I could go on, but those would just be nitpicks.I feel like there is a lot of substance to this movie and stuff I missed the first time, but for the aforementioned reasons I doubt there will be a second time.The only times I even felt remotely this deflated after watching an anime movie was after watching Wings of Honneamise (for similar reasons) and Steam Boy (not for lack of quality mind you, but for its unnecessarily long runtime).

I gave 4 stars just for the art and the music, but I really got bored a lot watching this, the story makes no sense, it's all so dreamy, so epic, the author wants you to deeply feel all this emotions but to me the result it's an hollow movie with hollow character. I've never fallen asleep watching something, but with this I barely succeeded to end it. I definitively suggest not to watch it, there are so many other beautiful anime to see out there. One thing I've enjoyed is the artwork, the landscapes are really intense and make you dream, but also there sometimes there is too much over production, too many light effects, it seems like a punch in the eye. And I hate when authors use science fiction in this way, by throwing here and there some gibberish theory and then making a mess with a convoluted plot, so that people at the end can say that it leave you with the freedom to interpret it, I find this technique over abused lately, and by the way I've never seen using it so badly like in this case

Mind-bending sci-fi is a staple of Japanese animation, and many of them are complex in a way that makes them difficult to grasp immediately. This one, though, I really don't think the director has any idea how to tell a story. The film is just never coherent. Not only is its science fiction premise (which deals with alternate universes) never clear, nor its world comprehensibly established, but it's terrible at establishing characters and their relationships to each other. All of the characters are quite thin and clichéd. The artwork is nice(the animation is a bit choppy, though), and the music is pretty (but also occasionally too sappy), but this is an annoying mess of a film.