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AKA: 君は彼方 ; Kimi wa Kinata (Wiki says this is literally "You Are Beyond")
Genre: Fantasy/Romance
Length: Movie, 95 minutes
Distributor: Licensed by crunchyroll for video stream.
Content Rating: PG-13 (Violence, deaths.)
Related Series: N/A
Also Recommended: Mirai; Starlight Promises; Lights Of The Clione
Notes: Written and directed by Yoshinobu Sena

Copyright: Over The Sky Production Committee
Rating:

Over The Sky

Synopsis

It's obvious that Mio Miyamasu likes Arata Kishimo, but when her friend Madoka expresses an interest in him, Mio inexplicably encourages Madoka to pursue him. Mio may have second thoughts about this later, but a huge obstacle emerges to block her way to telling him...


Review

Whenever I read a description of a story involving a girl "helping" her rival get the attention of a boy that she, herself, likes, I get the School Days shudders...

Fortunately, it's not like that here. Instead, this one belongs to what I'll call the Plea For A Cosmic Do-Over genre, in which the lead has massively screwed up, either by sin of commission or, as here, omission, and things can only be fixed by supernatural intervention. The complaints may be handled by Field Agents of the Divine (e.g., Mirai), but in other cases they have to be taken Directly Upstairs (e.g., A Whisker Away.)

Especially frustrating for everyone here (including the audience) is that the party at the center of this, Mio... has some problems. Short version is, Mio's got such a fear of failure that she can't commit to anything (AKA learned helplessness), but she's gone beyond even that: if she's even ASKED anything that MIGHT require a commitment, she forgets that she was even asked. She's got the most infuriating case of Selective Amnesia since Shoma's in Starlight Promises, because she's begging for an intervention, but when she's asked WHAT she wants to do, all she can say is, more or less, "Wait, it's on the tip of my tongue..." (NOT a direct quote, but it's the general idea.) Still, if you can't express your supposedly deeply-held feelings on LITERAL pain of death, with nothing left to lose (and your life to potentially gain back), one might wonder how strongly you feel them in the first place- a point which occurs to some of the characters in the movie THEMSELVES, so it wasn't just ME.

As for Arata, he's from a family that can readily manage out-of-body experiences, but seems to have problems doing the getting-back part. His body, his choice, he might say...EXCEPT for one person who has to labor incessantly just to keep him alive, who might have a very different take on that...

I did some Trainspotting: that "railway car moving across the ocean" bit was done in Fireworks. The scene with the official in the train station recalled a similar scene in Mirai. We have an SFX steal from Weathering With You. Mio gets to express her feelings in song (!), in a musical number that made me think of similar songs in shows like Frozen and their ilk. (The song is, alas, NOT as memorable as "Let It Go".) In short, the movie often seemed a smorgasbord of repurposed stuff from other shows. And, to reiterate the point, it's simply striking how quickly the resolve she expresses in her song, to Do The Right Thing, Break With The Past, and Save Herself, just simply evaporates. I KNOW that it's been SOP for someone in trouble to passively await rescue by the hero, but come ON, if she's not even willing to make the EFFORT...

I also thought it a little strange that someone wouldn't recognize a family member, even given that they hadn't seen them in a number of years- ESPECIALLY given that they had played a strarring role (of sorts) in a family-sundering tragedy...

Normally I'd go at least four stars on a movie like this, but honestly I felt like condemning Mio to a couple thousand years in Purgatory, OR until she Got Over Herself, whichever came first. She carries self-sabotage to depths seldom previously seen (in the mortal realm, anyway.)Allen Moody

Recommended Audience: Mature Themes (Death, Peril, and most of all Peril of Death). I can't find an MPAA rating; I'd guess PG-13.



Version(s) Viewed: Crunchyroll video stream
Review Status: Full (1/1)
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