/anime/12477/patema-inverted
Imagine walking on the ceiling of your room or any other closed environment & think about all the subtle changes that you might notice. You feel a bit dizzy now that gravity might work a bit differently, your pen might not work properly, you would have a hard time figuring out at all the upside down faces & objects, and you would probably feel way more awkward if you try to hug someone. By a small change in your perspective, your entire world looks and feels vastly different, which is fascinating. What's even more fascinating but equally terrifying, is when you think about "Falling" from this perspective. Where do you really fall? If you take a small peak outside of a door or a window under you, an endless sky will be waiting to make you disappear in a single second.
It's different, confusing, insanely frightening but most of all, it's really fascinating.
What "Patema Inverted" does is it takes this fascinating concept and breathes life to it. 15 minutes in and it gives you, what I recall as one of the grandiose shots in all Anime; showing a girl and a guy, falling into the sky. And from then on, you get pulled into its world and it'll amaze you through the end.
The movie shines during its moments where it fills the screen showing its enormous world from different locations, especially moments involving the sky might even take your breath away. It's that good.
While I really like this movie for its beautiful world, there are 2 main reasons why I think the movie couldn't become a truly unique Anime.
- Boring religious views in a Sci-fi setting: What bothers me the most is how it refuses to elaborate on its dictatorship government. The movie says that "Scientific Experiment failure caused Gravity Inversion", but it makes very little sense when the main villain always barks his hate towards inverted people saying that 'God banished those cursed people into the sky' with his boring religious views and somehow took over a scientifically advanced city. This is neither to say I oppose religion (I'm a Hindhu btw) nor I oppose the idea that sci-fi & religion shouldn't exist together in stories. There are many Anime & Manga (Madoka & Lustrous, for instance) where the sci-fi & religion elements go hand-in-hand to explain the world & progress the characters but it works because it isn't bland or half assed, unlike here where it deviates very much & leaves a lot of questions.
- Unimpressive Characters: The characters have personalities largely coming from the design & traits, but for such a grand concept, characters being just passable is kind of a shame. The story uses its tricks though, there is a Your Name-ish romance, a sleeping rebel beside the Hitler-inspired-but-bland villain and some unexplained flashback (which is the only point that really worked), but are very tied to cliches & are very predictable. Not saying all these are bad, some beautiful shot compositions and grand orchestral background music make it look beautiful but it's all just a trick, a very noticeable & poor trick.
Now one last thing, I would like to mention is the ending. While a bit predictable, what really sold the scene is once again, the world;
Spoiler, click to view
That Moon with Saturn-like rings is lovely surprise.
and also the beautiful ending song.
▶
At first, I thought it was just some non-Japanese foreign song but I was a bit surprised when I found out that the song was written in, "Esperanto", a language invented to bridge different people from different places and marvelled how well it worked with the theme of the movie.
#TL;DR
You probably won't like this movie if you only come in for the characters but its unique setting among Anime, sparkled with some really beautiful moments, is worth enough to give a try. 
