The Place Promised in Our Early Days is part of Japan Society double feature celebrating Makato Shinkai
THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS (Makoto Shinkai, 2004) / VOICES OF A DISTANT STAR (Makoto Shinkai, 2002)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, March 17, $15, 7:00
www.japansociety.org
Makoto Shinkai, who took the anime world by storm with his 2002 hit Voices of a Distant Star, a short film made completely on his home computer, followed that up with his first feature-length work, the magical and mystical The Place Promised in Our Early Days. Set in an alternate futuristic post-WWII world, The Place Promised centers on three friends, Hiroki, Takuya, and Sayuri, who make a vow to fly Hiroke and Takuya’s plane, Bela C’ielo, into the Tower, a monolithic structure rising into the sky that symbolizes the postwar division between the Union and US-Japanese forces. With war imminent, an older Takuya and Hiroki find themselves on opposing sides, with Sayuri lost in a coma dreamworld.
Although the plot — especially the science aspects — gets rather complex and confusing, The Place Promised is a beautiful-looking film, both tenderly sweet and harshly depressing, presenting a rather bleak forecast of the future. But stunning visual moments such as a setting sun with an illuminated halo that forms a shining star twinkling into an abandoned factory make it all worth it. Shinkai’s film was deservedly named Best Animated Film at the Mainichi Film Awards, where it topped the much more heralded Steamboy (Katsuhiro Otomo, 2004) and Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004).
In celebration of the April 14 North American release of Shinkai’s latest film, Suzume, a coming-of-age story about a seventeen-year-old protagonist, Japan Society is screening The Place Promised in Our Early Days on March 17 at 7:00 in its monthly anime series. It will be preceded by Voices of a Distant Star, a devastatingly melancholic and hauntingly gorgeous twenty-five-minute exploration of loneliness as Mikako chases the evil Tarsians through the galaxies with the UN Space Army carrier Lysithea (named after a Greek mythological figure and a genus of red algae) while Noboru, her true love since they were fifteen, waits for her messages, which take longer and longer to reach him the farther out the battle takes her. Tenmon’s piano score is heartbreaking in one of the saddest and most poignant animes ever made.