HELLO WORLD is more appropriate to be seen as a popcorn flick with entertaining scenes... and that's it really. · Waifora

Setting expectations:

Name: HELLO WORLD is more appropriate to be seen as a popcorn flick with entertaining scenes... and that's it really.
Item: HELLO WORLD
Rating: 65
Author: FestivalsOfComf

This review is being written under a subjective lens and mainly enjoyment.

The amount of spoilers will be as minimal as possible to none. I don’t talk more about the plot points except in spoiler text.

If you come to expect opinions from a very critical sense, sorry, but I’m not your guy as we may have different tastes.

I’ll try my best to explain what are the things that worked for me and what doesn’t in this review. Then you’ll hopefully be able to understand my point of view and maybe come to your own conclusion about what this movie will be like for you.

I preface because a lot of people online come to expect reviews to fit a mold of what they want which isn’t always realistic. For me, I just like to talk about anime I enjoy. And so this review is about such things. Sorry if this ain't what you're looking for.

Verdict

HELLO WORLD is a film released in 2019 by Graphinica studios. It’s directed by Tomohiko Itou (Sword Art Online, ERASED, Silver Spoon) with a script by Mado Nozaki (Babylon, Kado).

Note - the title is in clear reference to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Hello,_World!%22_program

If you’re the type of individual who is not too critical of the media they consume and enjoy many anime, this movie is something you’ll enjoy. This is where you stop in the review. You can now go watch the film and be able to form your own opinion. Feel free to read the rest if you’re curious.

If you’re the type of individual who is critical of the media they consume. I think you’ll have a bad time with the movie. Those ratings from your peers are correct in the low scores. Still want to continue on? Let me set your expectations. This is a popcorn-style movie where you might as well turn your brain off. Try to group watch this while intoxicated, this film could go into the ‘so bad so good’ territory from how it executes its story.

For me, I land between both camps personally.

I would give this a film a 6.5/10 on my scale.

It’s between 6 - ‘meh’ and 7 - ‘serviceable/entertaining’. This scale will differ on yours most likely but this is how I personally felt with it. In the future, I plan to show this film when intoxicated with friends and just shitpost on it as a group really. That’s how much I value the plot in general - just a piece of entertainment.

The rest of this review will now be me discussing my point of view and why I felt like it had that score.

Background

I remember hearing about this movie via a promotional graphic on reddit before its release. It seemed quite interesting based on its poster but I put it to bed until recently watching it in June 2020. Watched this film blind before going in.

If you look at the positive reviews, they talk about the complexity of the plot as a good thing and… I’ve seen a lot of complex/contrived anime. For this film, it’s genuinely not rocket science to piece things together if you were able to pay attention to the things around. I would say Evangelion TV still takes that confusing shit trophy.

Confused when watching this film? Look for an explanation via group watch, forums, or rewatch the film to pick up what you missed.

Personally, I was able to enjoy myself while watching this but I’ve seen dumpster fires before and enjoy the flames. This is one of those films for me. A popcorn flick that is shallow in its story and themes but overall entertaining in the way it presents itself for the right and wrong reasons. Thankfully, it’s not those anime that personally offended me and I was able to have it land in the ‘so bad but yet so good’ territory.

The Review

Now the review. I’ll be talking about the anime in the following categories:

1) Story / Plot / Characters

I really found the story to be shallow. It seems like they mashed up so much other anime/films together into its script that it becomes so laughable. References to Your Name, Evangelion Rebuild, Inception, etc. It never feels original in what it tries to do. Gotta give it props for attempting to mash up a lot of interesting/ambitious concepts but that’s about it really for its credit. There were honestly a lot of interesting ideas but it never developed them further, unfortunately.

The characters are very shallow in nature and while I found the main girl designs to be cute. There wasn’t much to establish a more meaningful connection between the characters. This lack of screen time dedicated to the characters harms the story, in my opinion. Maybe the characters are meant to be self-inserts but even then, the way the story handles its character in its plot… it feels honestly amateurish at points.

It doesn’t help that the amount of time is 1 hour and 30 minutes but it feels like the plot/structure is all over and not cohesive. The pacing at points feels too lagging and it seems like they were running out of time near the end based on how they were executing certain scenes. Also the structure really needed more story fleshed out. Felt so barebones at times. This might be explained in the visuals section.

2) Visuals / Animation

Most of this movie is in 3D CGI. If you absolutely hate it, I won’t blame you. Thankfully it’s not super offensive like other CGI in anime and it’s actually done well in certain scenes especially in action. Those scenes were honestly enjoyable and I admired how creative they went with using the CGI in said scenes. Hard to say the visuals were awful, it really varied from scene to scene with some of it looking pretty and some of it looking standard. The animating wasn’t that bad but off at certain parts, I eventually got used to it all.

I speculate that they literally ran out of budget by the end. This is because...

"the idea that 3DCG is inherently cheaper is widespread – why would it be used otherwise, if it’s always worse?! What that obviously ignores is that CGI studios aren’t limited to underfunded late-night TV anime like most 2D animation companies, and thus get to charge a lot more for their work. It’s true that the situation has led to smaller and less capable studios in charge of those cheap anime tasks, which is why the best work in TV series usually comes from companies like Samurai Pictures that mainly work in other industries. However, industry members have said over and over that the cost is a case by case scenario, and if anything tends to lean towards 3DCG being more expensive."

Source: https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2016/08/01/embracing-the-3dcg-menace-ambitious-action-girls-und-panzer-the-movie/

3) Audio / Soundtrack / Voice Acting

The audio design was standard, nothing to write home about.

Soundtrack was varying in levels of quality for me. There were one or two good tracks and the rest seemed standard to me. Main offense was the jazzy tracks because I feel like it was out of place at points personally (plus it sounded sexual in nature with its bass).

Voice acting was serviceable and I wasn’t able to personally connect or empathize with many except for the adults. They all tried their best with what they were given really.

4) Overall

I wasn’t super offended by this anime and I’ll chalk that up as a win. Some media has been recently offending me with its awful storytelling and so I’m glad to have found some entertainment from this movie - even if it wasn’t intentional at certain moments.

To most people I know, I think it would be a waste of time if they took a real look at this film while watching. So I say to lower those expectations to just shitposting at the film versus take it seriously.

This movie wasn’t great but it wasn’t super awful as I expected. It was okay with some awful moments that I saw as mere comedy at that point.

And for those who genuinely enjoyed this film, don’t take my words too seriously as it’s mainly my opinion. Don’t let negativity deter your enjoyment. If anything, I envy that you were able to enjoy this film a lot because I used to have similar reactions in the past for similar levels of storytelling. Eventually, I grew to be selective with certain anime and their storytelling choices.

That ends that. Hopefully this review was informative for what this movie can bring to the table. Having a negative review amongst positive reviews should now balance things out.

The section below is me talking about spoilers because I want to talk about it. I wouldn’t recommend reading it if you haven’t seen the film before as it may hinder your enjoyment from knowing things you shouldn't ahead of time.

Warning: most of it is negative in nature.

Spoiler-talk

Spoiler, click to view

Shoutout to the shitty dubstep track used in that action scene.

Anyways, this film will be special in my heart for how the Future MC literally cucked his younger self. You cannot see this unironically on the big screen and that was honestly a hilarious moment for me.

He literally helped his younger self to hook up with his teen girlfriend, only to steal it away from him to be together with her soul in her older body. That was so funny.

What made it even more funnier was how the younger MC decided to steal his girl back and was successful as fuck in moving to the real world. This was literally NTR the movie and that made me laugh. That’s why I recommend for critical people to shitpost at this film because it’s so hilarious to see that story/plot unfold when you’re drunk. It’s so awful but you can’t help but enjoy it.

It’s too bad that it tried to be way too ambitious for its own good. I actually did enjoy its premise and was interested in where it was going. Having his younger self hook up because of the future self time-travelling, etc etc. Combine this with dystopian-like themes of the government always watching and drones; sets up a very interesting baseline on where to go.

Too bad we are going full Rick and morty with the simulations and the matrix/inceptions. At least the computer terms weren’t offensive with using restore, safe mode, etc. It was honestly interesting but again so shallow. I forget where I decided this shit is now popcorn-flick level. It was probably when I saw the future MC try to hook his younger self up.

That screamed otaku wish-fulfillment so much. Maybe it was the first few minutes when I was going to see a shy meek japanese boy try to go to school and all. Also, the unnecessary slow motion and speed-up scenes made no sense. It made me think I had a copy where it was edited to troll on purpose.

This production was honestly awful that every serious moment met with me laughing. It’s too bad because when the adult MC realized that Riru couldn’t accept Naomi’s feelings, that would’ve been such good fucking drama. Too bad they just jump into a huge action chase scene instead. If anything, that shit was overkill with having them try to eliminate Riru instead of letting the adult MC realize his life's work was all for naught, the love wasn’t there and he should’ve moved on. Instead they attempt to take Riru away for more dramatic effect which was honestly dumb and ruins the cool montage of the adult MC taking years to save Riru from comatose.

Thank you the Matrix: NTR version for your profound entertainment.