A Place Further Than the Universe

Let's be clear right from the get-go here. A Place Further Than The Universe is not really about Antarctica per se. It's about Antarctica in the same way that Citizen Kane is about running a newspaper business. Further is more akin to a young adult novel than anything else, an adventure series whose premise straddles a line between the fantastical and the merely unlikely (it is certainly technically possible that a group of highschoolers might someday be sent to Antarctica, but it's not exactly a safe bet, is it?), and indeed the anime's very title is an allusion to the sheer improbability of the task at hand--space seems a more likely destination than the world's final, frozen continent.

What makes this work is the series' buildup, taking protagonist Kimari's desire to tag along with her friend Shirase to Antarctica from in the beginning more of a mere impulse, to a full on quest by the end of the fourth episode (complete with a sunrise and stirring music). The desire to go to Antarctica specifically may not resonate with many, but the desire to go out and see the world, to escape--even temporarily--from one's everyday hometown life, to go, in the show's own words to "somewhere that isn't here", is damn near universal.

Near its halfway point, at the end of the fifth episode, is where it becomes clear that Antarctica in this series is a metaphor for growing up and more specifically, for seizing control of one's life, for shaking up one's routine. On the dawn of Kimari's departure, Megumi, Kimari's longtime childhood friend (and recurring second-stringer throughout the first half of the series), tearfully "breaks up" her friendship with Kimari and confesses that she's been spreading rumors and making Kimari's life difficult in a bid to sabotage her trip to frozen frontier. Both characters cry full-on ghibli tears as Megumi comes to the realization that she's been clinging to her friend, and using her as an emotional crutch. The soundtrack swells and Kimari rejects the "break up", forgiving her friend even as the both of them step into a world without each other for the first time since they were kids. It's the third episode in a row to deliver a knockout finale and easily places Further in the upper echelon of anime in its season all on its own.

This extended metaphor continues throughout the series, and is evident in just how much of the show's runtime is devoted to the girls overcoming the minutiae and mundanities of making the trip to Antarctica. A trip that does not actually begin in earnest until over halfway through the series. This makes a lot of sense if you think about it, reaching your goals is often a hard and furthermore a tedious process, filled with pitfalls and any number of things great and small that could easily go wrong. Further succeeds by not skipping over this. The series' first third is dedicated to the girls simply securing the money and permission to go on the trip in the first place, and the second revolves around their overcoming obstacles on the actual trip--Hinata losing her passport in Singapore, the girls adjusting to life aboard the ship (and enduring a wicked bout of seasickness), and so on.

Then there is episode 9. Shirase's character is probably the one whose initial motivation ties into this extended metaphor the least, at first at any rate. For most of the series everyone--including the audience--assumes that the main reason Shirase wants to go to Antarctica is the distant hope of finding her mother, who was part of a civilian expedition not unlike (and sharing many crewmembers with) the one she is on during the series' latter half, went missing during an inland expedition, and is presumed dead. This is mostly true, but there's another angle, Shirase's relationship with Gin Toudou, the expeditionary leader, Shirase's late mother's friend, and someone who has known Shirase herself since she was a child. It's established over the course of the series that the two have a very strained relationship, and during the climax of the 9th episode they talk. Shirase blames Toudou for her mother's apparent death and is evidently somewhat in denial about doing so, but more to the point, and tying back into the Antarctica-as-independence theme, Shirase feels that her life stalled after her mother's death (she later compares it, in episode 12, to a dream she feels like she never woke up from). The rhetoric is familiar; every day was the same. Antarctica, again, serves as a means of escape, an end to the endless everyday--the Slice of Life cycle of consequence-free repetition that many lighthearted anime embrace, but in the real world (and here), is a trap. Shirase pours her heart out, and we are met with the immediate visual metaphor of the expedition ship hitting fast ice, and having to ram through it (as well as a brief history lesson about Japan's allotted routes to the frozen continent). The episode ends with our girls--all at once--stepping foot onto the Antarctic snow. A place further than the universe, finally within reach.

So with all of this said, how does one assess Further Than The Universe in a broad sense? On the whole, and within the context of its medium? Well, here's the thing. When it premiered, Further got unfairly pegged with the non-description that is the "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" pseudo-genre, and while the term isn't entirely inaccurate here (certainly, the cast is all-female, and they are adorable true enough), it's not even close to the full picture. Further is an adventure series, and furthermore (har har) it is one defined in part by a thematic opposition to the slice of life series that make up the majority of what gets called "CGDCT". Further is, boiled down to its barest essentials, a story about coming of age, about becoming independent, and about breaking away from the societal cycles it is all too easy to get trapped in. Look, for instance, at how little of the show actually takes place in high school despite its main cast all being teenage girls (and how it's unambiguously portrayed as a place of trauma, and a place to escape, for Shirase and Hinata). The series is not entirely unique in this regard, as this kind of anti-Slice of Life genre dates back at least to Sound of The Sky, if not farther. But the key difference between Further and many of those earlier series is twofold. The first is that Further takes place in a setting much more akin to the real world (the events improbable but far from impossible) as opposed to a dystopia or similarly downbeat setting, and the second is related, that Further finds in that opposition, not something disheartening or depressing, but something inspiring. There is nothing antagonistic about Further's relationship to "cozy" slice of life shows, it stands apart from them, and as a result of its ambitions, is something altogether different.

There is of course more to the show--both in breadth and depth--in the end, it is probably impossible to touch on every single thing that Yoromoi does right. There is so much packed into its thirteen episodes that there is a real temptation to ramble until words lose their meaning about them. It is a story about growing up, independence, friendship, parents. Big ideas, broad things that a lesser anime would sweep aside entirely or carefully pick and choose from. Part of what makes Further so brilliant is how all of this fullness and richness takes not a single thing away from the main arc of the show--Shirase coming to Antarctica, the place where her mother died. An arc that finally reaches a sob-inducing conclusion at the end of the show's penultimate episode, where, in its biggest break from reality (but such a well-earned one), the girls, visiting the camp site where Shirase's mother disappeared near, find two things. One, a frost-encrusted picture of Shirase and her mother. The other, a miraculously still-functioning laptop. Shirase opens the computer, opens her mother's email, and sees messages--over a thousand of them, from Shirase herself to her mother's untouched in years inbox--pouring in. Here, Shirase and the other girls break down crying, and so, it's not unlikely, do you.

The last episode is probably the one that hews closest to what the term "slice of life" usually conjures, but by that point, it's so well-earned, and so deserved, that it's just more emotional payoff. Even in its victory lap the show captures you, over and over. The scene at the end of the twelfth episode is probably what will set off the most waterworks but for me, the title card at the very end of the series is what sent me tearing up, Further absolutely does not ever lapse, even for a second.

It is ultimately that very command of emotion, genuinely masterful in its execution, that makes Further so perfect. Its flaws--extant but minor--are so few and nitpicky as to not even be worth mentioning, when every single note of character and plot development is played this well, they simply don't matter.

If all of us had friends like Shirase's, finding our own personal Antarctica would not be so hard, and it's telling that the series itself seems to wish us that exact thing. After all, at the very end of the last episode, we have this:

The sort of touching farewell that assures you that yes, the people who made this genuinely did pour their whole hearts into it. Somewhat incredibly, Further is director Atsuko Ishizuka's first longform project that is not an adaptation. If this is a work of auteurship, then, we can only hope that the title of the final episode--" We'll Go On Another Journey Someday"--is something of a promise, of more of this--this whole thing--in anime. It's something well worth hoping for.

And if you liked this review, why not check out some of my others here on Anilist?