The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

After years of postponing watching this, I finally sat down and gave it a watch. The movie itself is greatly lacking in terms of exposure, character development and plot. Give me a pair of scissors and I will cut it down into a 15min short film without skipping anything remotely important.The film centers around the promise two characters make, but doesn't really develop these characters well. Yes, we get to know that she has a bit of a crush on him and vice versa, but we only know so through a little bit of dialogue that might just as well have been a breach of the 4th wall. Show, don't tell. For some random reason these characters are allegedly tied together by this promise - even after not seeing each other for 3 years and having spent very little time together before. Around all that are a sci-fi AND a geopolitical story line that are both just as poorly developed.The film has stunning visuals, but those won't fool me into believing to having seen something beautiful or well thought out. TLDR: Average film with lots of issues and lack of heart.

I've watched Makoto Shinkai's "The Place Promised In Our Early Days" a couple times now and the film is an absolute masterpiece, easily fulfilling the great promise he demonstrated in "Voices Of A Distant Star". And when I say masterpiece I'm talking about a brilliant director on the level of the legendary Miyazaki. No description I give can possibly replicate or do justice to the experience of watching this film. It has to be seen. I will be watching it again--and soon! Still, I'll mention a few of the things about "The Place Promised In Our Early Days" that impressed me.The setting is a Japan of a parallel world and that science-fiction concept is reasonably important in the development of the plot and the relationships between the three central characters: The gentle Hiroki, his much tougher but close friend Takuya, and Sayuri the girl who returns Hiroki's love. All three characters are well drawn and highly sympathetic and their complex relationship unfolds in the context of a coming conflict which tests their loyalty to each other and to their society. This coming war centres upon a great tower by which the Northern enemy {the Union} will attempt to destroy the U.S. controlled South by replacing it with another parallel universe causing the South simply to disappear. The creator of the tower was Sayuri's grandfather and somehow she is linked to its implementation. After writing a final love letter to Hiroki she falls into a coma and finds her consciousness trapped in a lonely and desolate parallel universe. This prevents the tower from becoming operative and it becomes unusable as a weapon. As long as she sleeps, the stalemate continues. Obviously Hiroki wishes to wake her but Takuya who works in the compound where Sayuri is kept feels the choice is between saving Sayuri or saving the world.That's an outline of the essentials of the plot but there is so much more to this film! It wrestles with significant and profound themes. The division between reality and dream is a constant motif. Is Sayuri actually in a dream universe when she sleeps or is she instead in a different reality? Is that desolate world a landscape of the terrible inner loneliness we all sometimes experience? Hiroki experiences the misery of loneliness when he finds the girl he loves so much--his soul mate--is taken from him. On a different level, Takuya {who in a different way} is also a soul-mate must decide if he is honour bound to refuse to help Hiroki and Sayuri. Informing these conflicts is the great overarching theme of Love and Sacrifice. Not simply the romantic love of Hiroki and Sayuri but the love which exists between comrades in arms, close friends, and the great social nexus which makes all such loves possible. In some ways the film can also be seen as a meditation on Time and memory; the need to give up something if one wishes to move on.The visuals in The Place Promised In Our Early Days are truly stunning, but not in the flamboyant manner of "Appleseed". Rather Shinkai's colour palette frequently uses highly evocative, psychologically ambient textures--sometimes nearly monochromatic in effect. For instance, the final scenes make very controlled and beautiful use of blue with violet overtones.The music score is perfectly evocative and very, very beautiful {How hard it is not to use those superlatives!}Without giving anything away, the ending has the bittersweet quality of "Voices Of A Distant Star: and the gently reflective short feature "She and Her Cat". Something of the sensitive, sweet, and melancholy beauty of this film is present in the opening lines of the closing end song:The white clouds are blurred in the faded blue. It's the color of that distant day. In the depths of my heart Lies a pain I hide from everyone.See this film! You've missed something if you haven't.

In the beginning I was really put off and annoyed because I suck at dealing with technology, and the whole middle of the movie is just about the technology of building the airplane, I was annoyed. then i read people's comments on the movie and how amazing it was, and i forced myself to watch the rest of it, and it was flawless in the end, so it made up for it, i give it a 10/10! i was so beautiful and their love was so pure. not like these other movies where they claim to be in love, but there is no proof. They truly were. It was kind of confusing at some points, like about the connection to the tower, but it turned out to be worth it. =]watch it! it's a must see anime!

For a movie that goes for 90 minutes to last my group of friends 120 minutes to watch one must think it's pretty awful.We paused the film many times to talk about what happened but still ended up finishing the movie with no clue.The story was very nicely written but was all over the place. For some reason Hokkaido had been taken over or something and a tower was built... Why??? don't ask me What happens??? I don't know... it was nice but not good,. I may be writing a critique about this film but it was so confusing do not know what to write about. It was just so hard...Watch it if you need to fall asleep.