mom: no we have The Place Promised in Our Early Days at home
The Place Promised in Our Early Days at home:
Watching World, Before You End feels like watching the movie what Shinkai haters described. It has an ambitious melodramatic plot that seems to be entangled in fantasy, its characters are weak or bland and it is 'carried' by its animation.
This 30-minute short anime is DEFINITELY inspired by Shinkai's earlier unpolished works such as
/anime/433/the-place-promised-in-our-early-days
and
/anime/256/voices-of-a-distant-star
First I will get the very obvious criticisms out of the way first:
Animation and art
Its animation honestly on a technical level is pretty bad compared to contemporary standards. Still, I definitely see the effort and I also think it's a passion project made by either a single person or a tiny team. But It just screams deviant art beginner fan art energy.
When it comes to the writing and plot, I find it really forced. This makes it kind of predictable and contrived as I really know how the flow of the narrative is going down to the specifics. This won't be much of a big deal if the story builds up the word and characters enough for me to care which it did not. I was thoroughly bored watching from beginning to end as it fail to capture my attention and interest from its writing, and music to its visuals.
Despite what a low-quality production this short OVA turned out to be I still can help but empathize and recognize the moderate amount of effort and passion that is injected into it, especially in its direction. Don’t get me wrong its overall direction is still terrible with unnecessary long dialogues, slow and meaningless dragged-out scenes and over usage of lighting overlays for what I assume is for a fantasy and sci-fi feel.
There definitely feels like an honest attempt at the direction to make it good (at least that’s how it feels to me)
If I have one positive praise for this OVA it is definitely the female lead’s voice actor. And honestly, I really don’t know if it's because the other qualities of this OVA are so bad that it makes the female VO’s performance shine like a diamond in a dark room or she was genuinely good.
In conclusion and some parting thoughts…
Why did I watch this OVA? I have no idea honestly, it just came to me at a whim when I saw it. Maybe I was taking a leap of faith, I wanted to be pleasantly surprised but got what I expected (unfortunately) Overall that was not a good experience and I think I have more fun writing this review than the 30 minutes of watching it. Yea, do not recommend it.