I loved this. I truly did. Because I watched it with a friend who loved it with me.
Loved to rip it limb from gravity-defying limb.
This movie is simple: there’s a boy, and this boy is different. He’s so different, in fact, that he’s the only one in his world that even looks alive. Then, there’s a girl, and this girl is different. She’s so different, in fact, that she’s the only one with enough spirit to accidentally fall off of her world and float into another. Because that makes sense. When you bring a boy and girl like this together, you’re bound to create an anime movie of epic proportions.
The story of a boy and a girl. They’re both a little out there, but understand each other in almost every way. This immediate spark between them is cute and sparkly… on the surface. The only thing is, if you’ve seen this once, good on ya. If you’ve seen it twice, it might be a tad stale. If you’ve seen it eight hundred and thirty-seven times, it’s cliche. It’s cliche, cliche, cliche. The entire relationship between these two main protagonists is cliche down to the very core. But it doesn’t stop there. After a whole twelve hours of knowing one another, they’re suddenly willing to throw their lives on the line to make sure each are safe from harm. I wish girls would love me unconditionally after twelve hours.
The only thing worse than the two main protagonists is the main antagonist. Y’know those characters you see where they seem like they were written in a minute? That would be the main antagonist of this movie. He’s evil, because he’s good at it. He controls the world, because he can. And he wants to eradicate anyone who doesn’t follow his regime. What a cute guy. I wonder how he was raised. Probably by rats. It would explain his behavior more than the movie explained about the state of the world.
What is the state of this world? Well, I can tell you what it’s not: clear. They claim that the gravity is mixed up because of an experiment they did long ago. Why did they do this experiment? Because they could. Why did it go out of control? Because it could. Why was this movie made? Because it could be. As soon as they got that little tidbit out of the way, they carried on like it wasn’t important. They also did a lot of things with gravity and the air and things that didn’t make sense. But they DO make sense! Because gravity is weird! How convenient for the sake of the movie! Yeah! That’s not stupid! I swear!
How this movie looked can be described in a number of ways. I’ll choose number one: fine. The sky and the background were actually nice. I liked them. They looked like they actually had work put into it. It’s almost breathtaking, but for the time this was made (2013), it could’ve been better. Speaking of which, the characters didn’t look spectacular either. The designs were subpar, and the characters themselves didn’t have the same shine as the environment did. One thing this movie has going for it is the upside down shots. I liked the way it incorporated that, at least. Everything else just falls flat… or floats in the air.
The music was fine, but I was never emotionally invested in the movie regardless, so it didn’t matter much.
In the effort of elaboration, I’ll make this blunt: this movie was really stupid. The characters and their interactions are cliche, bland, or both. Most are underdeveloped, few even matter. The story gives itself just enough of a backstory to justify all the backwards shit that goes on between worlds, which is still baseless. This movie is nothing but a lost cause, a particle floating in the space that it created for itself, flailing aimlessly for some sort of solid ground. It just can’t seem to figure out how to make a story. Unfortunately, not a lot of people see it for the mistake it really is. At least it looks like a thing!
The Visualist's Veranda 