Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

-Mark Twain

A Place Further Than the Universe is a masterpiece of an anime. It’s one of the best anime of Winter 2018 because of all the fantastic story, visuals, and character development uncovered throughout the anime.
Mari Tamaki (known throughout anime as Kimari) is a high school student. She one day finds her old diary that says, “Make the most of your youth.” Feeling saddened that she hasn’t traveled anywhere, she sets off to go to Tokyo, but was too nervous to go. While waiting for the train home, she sees a girl running that drops a small package. Kimari tries but fails to catch up to the girl who had already left. She opens the small package to see one million yen. The next day in school, she asks her childhood friend Megumi Takahashi to help find the girl. Kimari finds the girl in the bathroom crying. The girl is named Shirase Kobuchizawa, a girl who wants to go to Antarctica to see her mother. Kimari decides to join her and go on an adventure to Antarctica.
Let's get something out of the way, this anime is a very unique one. Four high school girls going to Antarctica is something new/different from what we have now. Really, the only other anime related to this is Pingu in the City.
If the story was different, it probably wouldn’t be as successful as it got. The story is also somewhat simple to digest.
The animation looks realistic. Maybe too realistic.

But in all seriousness, the character designs and backgrounds look very good. The animation during the opening and ending is related to the anime as it shows their journey going to Antarctica. After the opening, you see a photo on instagram related to the episode, which looks very cool. About everything in the anime is based on it’s real life counterpart. Things ranging from the city Tatebayashi, to the area known as Syowa station in antarctica, to Gunma an actual location in the Kanto region. The Japanese Antarctic expedition is also based on real life. There are two versions of the Japanese Antarctic Expedition, one of which is important to the anime, the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition. It took place from 1968 to 1977 and took place in Syowa Station. Syowa Station (also known as Showa Station) is a permanent research station in Antarctica. My first impressions of the anime were positive and overall the first episode was executed well. The opening and ending songs are very cute and catchy. There isn’t an issue with the voice acting/music audio in the song thankfully. Lip-syncing is also very well done, which is surprising considering many other anime i’ve have struggled with this. The voice actors portray the characters well, from crying to being overly excited. The anime also contains around 8 songs, most of which I enjoyed. Kimari is a high school girl that is shy and nervous (as seen from the first episode), but becomes more open because of the people around her and the experiences she goes through throughout the anime. Although she is shy and reserved she does have one childhood friend (explained later in the review). At many points throughout the anime I found myself thinking she was too stubborn, ultimately however, I decided she was a well rounded main character. Shirase Kobuchizawa is another shy girl that wants to go to Antarctica. She is the daughter of Takako Kobuchizawa, an Antarctic observation crew member. Shirase is bullied by other people because of the outlandish dream/goal she has but in my opinion she's the best mc going along on the journey. She's my favorite main character mainly because she’s the one that started it all and is the reason why they’re all going on this journey. Hinata Miyake is the third important member in the journey. She dropped out of high school and works at a convenience store. At first I thought that she was bipolar (I still think it’s a possibility), as seen in the anime, but it could be that she’s just good at fake smiling, which always throws me off. One instance of her mood changing almost too quickly was when she left the building, Shirase follows her and notices that she is screaming and mad. When Hinata goes back inside, she is smiling. She is the least important main character however. The fourth and last main character is Yuzuki Shiraishi, a long running famous actress. She didn’t want to go to Antarctica at first, but convinced. She was different than the other main characters because she never had any real friends (real as in they didn’t care she was popular) so she didn’t know much about friendship. She was a very cool character in the anime. Someone else worth mentioning is Kimaris childhood friend Megumi Takahashi. Although not extremely important to the story she could technically be the antagonist. I didn’t like her because of her attitude towards Kimari’s adventure. All of these characters are good and do a good job hooking you into story. > >