Seriously, was ANYONE expecting a show like A Place Further Than The Universe? And for it to turn out to be great? On the surface, it looked like it was going to be yet another cookie cutter cute-girls-doing-cute-things show. But then it was revealed it was going to be about the main characters going to Antarctica. Show of hands, who there thought "Oh man, this is gonna be sooooo bad!" and assumed it'd completely botch its premise in favor of cutesy anime schoolgirl shenanigans? Even I was kinda flummoxed and wondered how the show would even tackle that premise. And then the first episode aired and people changed their opinions on it right away, me included. The show then proceeded to become one of the most popular and talked about during the winter 2018 season, to the point where it was flat-out featured on the friggin' New York Times! How? How did this happen? What's even so special about this show anyway? A lot of things, actually, and I'm in full agreement that Place Further Than The Universe absolutely earned its acclaim.

16-year-old Mari Tamaki has made a terrible discovery: She hasn't managed to do anything interesting with her life so far! Not for lack of trying on her part, but Kimari's the type of person to get anxious and back out at the last minute whenever she even attempts to try something new, and can never seem to get past that block no matter how hard she tries. Then one day, she sees a girl from her school racing past her at the train station. The girl loses an envelope that turns out to be filled with cash–one million yen. That's a lot of money for a high school girl to have on her, isn't it? When Mari tracks her down, the girl in question, Shirase Kobuchizawa, tells Mari that her mother was lost on an Antarctic research trip when she was in middle school, and now her goal is to raise money to go find her. She invites Mari to go along with her on the trip, which just may be the push that Mari needs to finally begin living the life she wants. Together with two other girls, cheerful yet mature Hinata Miyake and snarky celebrity Yuzuki Shiraishi, they make their way to Antarctica, down in the farthest regions of the Earth.

I'm no expert on Antarctica, but any person with even a sliver of knowledge of Antarctica or how to get there will tell you that going there is no easy feat. It's easy to assume that, in the wrong hands, A Place Further Than The Universe would use the setting as little more than a shiny backdrop for cutesy moe adventures, ignoring all the danger and rules that come with actually going there. Thankfully, the show itself has no interest in shallow, surface level effort and actually treats the actual trip to Antarctica very seriously, addressing every question viewers might have for it: How do they get there? How would they even be able to get permission to go? Where do they get the money? What do they need to take with them? How will they be able to deal with the potential dangers there? Every stage of the trip is planned out in meticulous detail, showing that the creators really put in the work and research to make the premise feel palpable and believable. Some might not like that the girls don't manage to actually get to Antarctica until episode 9, but I think the build-up is worth it because the work that goes into actually getting to Antarctica is just as important as the actual destination, and having the kids just appear there out of nowhere would feel really cheap and unearned.

But A Place Further Than The Universe can't just bank itself on its premise alone, and thankfully, the show's writers conjured a great cast of characters to follow on their journeys of self-discovery and self-actualization. All four of the main girls each have their own goals and reasons for taking the trip to Antarctica, making them feel more significant than just "We wanna go to this awesome place!" and they're all wonderfully fleshed out and developed, to the point where you can't explain their arcs and personalities in just one sentence. The series makes it a point to deconstruct the usual character archetypes associated with CGDCT shows, even if the show itself doesn't quite fit the CGDCT mold because of it's more ambitious adventure/coming of age story type plot, and any drama that comes from it actually feels natural and makes sense rather than feeling forced, cheesy, and cheap. I do feel more could have been done with every side character that's not Gin or Takako, but Place Further Than The Universe put them to good use, and the main four girls carry the show perfectly. Honestly, the only character I can say I actually hated was that one lady who's always whining about her boyfriend. Seriously, what even is the point of this character? She's completely useless and does literally nothing but whine and cry about her boyfriend.

The animation for this series also does a lot to elevate the show. For a series like this, Madhouse put a surprising amount of care and detail into everything, from expressive character motion, to the lush, detailed backgrounds, to creative lighting that changes depending on the mood and atmosphere of a scene, and so on. Even the CGI, thankfully, is kept to where it's appropriate and never intrudes on the 2D animation. What else is there to say about it that others haven't said already? It really surprises me how much care was put into this, and Madhouse didn't need to go this hard, but they did, and a lot of it has to do with director Atsuko Ishizuka, who I admittedly don't know a whole lot about, and I've never seen No Game No Life, nor do I want to. But after seeing Yorimoi and her later movie Goodbye Don Glees, I really hope she gets to do more stuff, because she and her team have proven they have talent. The soundtrack is pretty nice too, soft and appropriately moody when it needs to be, and the opening, ending, and insert songs are all used to great effect and fit the show perfectly...though was it really necessary to have insert songs in literally EVERY SINGLE episode? Eh, that's really my only complaint about it.

Yorimoi also has great pacing and every episode feels carefully planned out. No scene ever feels wasted, and I never felt like the series left any loose ends hanging. The story itself is well told and given the right amount of gravitas and emotional weight that is required for something like going to Antarctica. A series about anime girls going to Antarctica shouldn't work on paper, but the team at Madhouse managed to make it work, and by framing the journey to Antarctica as being more about growing as a person, embracing your true self, and facing all the unknowns that come with adolescence, all of its dramatic beats actually felt earned. And really, A Place Further Than The Universe really has no business being this good. This is a show that I'd recommend to just about anyone, and it's a great example of what an original anime production can do when it's allowed to tell a story from beginning to end. Now that it's finally out on blu-ray in the US, complete with an English dub, it's more accessible, though you will have to pay a pretty penny to buy said blu-ray. I did, and I don't regret it one bit.