In an alternate timeline, Japan was divided after losing World War II: Hokkaido was annexed by "Union" while Honshu and other southern islands were under US sovereignty. A gigantic yet mysterious tower was constructed at Hokkaido and could be seen clearly from Aomori (the northernmost prefecture of Honshu) across Tsugaru Strait. In the summer of 1996, three 9th-graders had made a promise that one day they'll build an aircraft and unravel the tower's mystery, but their project was abandoned after the girl, Sayuri Sawatari, began experiencing sleeping sickness and transferred to Tokyo for better treatment. Three years later, Hiroki Fujisawa accidentally found out that Sayuri had been in coma since then, and he asked Takuya Shirakawa to help him finding a way to revive her. What they don't know yet is that Sayuri's unconsciousness is somehow linked with secrets of the tower and the world.
~Anime News Network
It finally happened, I got up the nerve to watch another Makoto Shinkai Anime. Now most people would scoff at me for being wary of an anime title, but Shinkai takes the experience to a whole new level, honestly this is the man behind " 5 Centimeters per Second" a movie I was enticed to see by my uncle during the Otakon, to my everlasting shame I'm probably still feeling the effects of watching it. The song, "One More Time, One More Chance" by Masayoshi Yamazaki, still beings me close to tears if im not feeling my 100% evil genuis attitude. Honestly though I did have to listen to it about a dozen+ times to get over the songs effect on my personal well being ;) . But I listen to a lot of music, this song would have just been a nice vocal acoustic piece if it hadn't been for the anime sequence that accompained it. Which brings us to just what makes Shinkai s good at what he does, he;s really able to bring out emotion from any situation that he wants, I mean, "5 cm/ second" wasn't anything more than two freinds falling out of touch after one moves away, and the occasional thoughts they have of eachother. Luckily for us, he's not so cruel as to just make us want to commit sepukku everytime we flip on the TV, and being the good and gracious creative God that he is, has given us a movie that doesn't make us wish we had stopped watchign half way through.
On to the actual anime now, I have to say I really enjoyed watching this more than most movies of the genre. As with most of Shinkai creations, we're guarenteed beautiful animation coupled with a compelling story that doesn't go to far trying to explain back sotry or history in the short amount of time alloted. He has a really good sense of timing and how far to take certain issues before it becomes boring history that doesn't develop the character relationships or progress the story. Now I'm stressing this fact because "Early Days" deals builds ona a complicated back story of japanese civil war and international involvement mixed with scientific concepts that may be slightly unfamilar to those not in school or in physics, in spite fo this Shinkai more than competantly explains everything bit by bit so that it's clear how Sayuri's condition and astrophysics coincide or how the imminent japanese civil war will affect the goals of Hiroki and Takuya.
After a certain point in the movie, we really only communicate with Sayuri through dream sequences slightly reminiscent of Shinji's annoyingly long mental breakdown moments, Shinkai doesn't let these run rampant and tear us away from the current story line that holds us so entranced. For 90 minutes of movie, the veiwers get to know the charaters as people, instead of the general types that we generally find in most anime. What I mean to say is that Takuya comes off more as a complicated individual torn between whatever may be conflicting in him than "the really smart cool guy who gets all the girls but never seems interested/ loner".
Like I said earlier, the animation is gorgeous like all of Shinkai's other works, he's behind the stroy boards and animation for the most part, so you can expect to see the same quality and features tht you've seen in "Voices of a Distant Star" or "5 Cm/Sec". The animation actually brought memories or hopes of what the summer would be like for me, in a strange way the whole ethreal glow of the animation really got me excited for the summer, it's like the scenery seemed surreal but not far off from soemthing you could find yourself admiring about your local small town city on a warm saturday night.
The music was well done and was never inappropriate for the mood set by the movie. If anything the music wasn't exactly noticable or too important, becasue the anime was generally in a tone of low tension and realtive peace. The violin solo was pretty to listen to, and what I liked more was that you could tell it was very important to Shinkai that the animation be timed to fit the one or two scenes that the solo was performed for us. One of the worst things that always takes away from any anime or movie is having a musical moment not match up in any way with the instrument, it ruins the illusion cast by the movie; "Evangelion: Death and Rebirth" has a series of beautiful scenes where the characters play cellos, violins, ect., and what made it work was the fact that the characters weren't just moving the bows across the strings without cooridination or sense of timing.
Finally, the most rewarding this about this movie, at least for me, was it was one of the few animes I get to watch that everything actually works out in the end, without spoiling anything, "Early Days" finishes without you crying your eyes out for days after or going to bed emotionally scarred. It's not as though I didn't have my doubts, especially approaching the end, but really, this is such a nice switch from the usual emotional masochism thats come to be characterist of Shinkai's work. If you have some time on a weekend and want to get away from the actioned packed world outside I'd highly recommend picking this up.
