Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku (Now and Then, Here and There)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku

Japanese: 今、そこにいる僕

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 13

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 14, 1999 to Jan 20, 2000

Premiered: Fall 1999

Broadcast: Thursdays at 19:00 (JST)

Producers: Victor Entertainment, Pioneer LDC, Rakuonsha

Licensors: ADV Films, Central Park Media

Studios: AIC

Source: Original

Genres: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Themes: Isekai, Military

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 7.61¹ (scored by 42,642 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1478²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1570

Members: 145,605

Favorites: 1,200

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Synopsis

Shuuzou "Shuu" Matsutani lives his ordinary life in peace. He has friends, a crush, and a passion for kendo. Dejected after losing to his kendo rival, Shuu climbs a smokestack to watch the sunset where he finds Lala-Ru, a quiet, blue-haired girl wearing a strange pendant. Shuu attempts to befriend her, despite her uninterested, bland responses.

However, his hopes are crushed when a woman, accompanied by two serpentine machines, appear out of thin air with one goal in mind: capture Lala-Ru. Shuu, bull-headed as he is, tries to save his new friend from her kidnappers and is transported to a desert world, unlike anything he has ever seen before. Yet, despite the circumstances, Shuu only thinks of saving Lala-Ru, until he is thoroughly beaten up by some soldiers. As he soon finds out, Lala-Ru can manipulate water and her pendant is the source from which she is able to bring forth the liquid, a scarce commodity in his new environment. But now, the pendant is lost, and Shuu is the prime suspect.

Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku is the haunting story of a dystopian world, and of Shuu, who has to endure torture, hunger, and the horrors of war in order to save the lonely girl he found sitting atop a smokestack.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

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Matsuyama, Takashi
Japanese

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Staff

Haigney, Michael

Producer

Daichi, Akitarou

Director, Script, Storyboard, Original Creator

Tanaka, Kazuya

Sound Director

Ootsuka, Masahiko

Episode Director

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Opening Theme

"Ima, Soko Ni Iru Boku (Now and Then, Here and There; 今、そこにいる僕)" by Toshio Masuda (増田俊郎)

Edit

Ending Theme

"Komoriuta... (Lullaby...; 子守歌…)" by Reiko Yasuhara

Reviews

Dec 21, 2023

KrenZane

Recommended

*SPOILER REVIEW*

Warm colors and a cold hand,
Misty morals in a desert land,
Dreams escape until the ends of time,
Till the child of the past's uphill climb

I am reminded of the somber signs of sunsets,
The brief hope of an ending day,
Through the ranges of the years,
...

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Feb 1, 2023

robinde67

Mixed Feelings

I don't usually write reviews, but this one was a ride, and overall I would actually say I actually liked this anime. Most characters are believable, i could see them responding in the way they did if a human was put in the same position. with the sole exception being our main character, who has a willpower the strength of a goddamn diamond. The premise is good and one that has been rarely explored. However, there is one thing that bothered me as the series went on, something that was never addressed, something that made the premise kind of irrelevant and implausible.

It's in the synopsis, ...

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Dec 22, 2022

RebelPanda

Not Recommended

*This review contains spoilers in a marked section*

I finally watched the cult classic "Now and Then, Here and There" the anti-war series released two decades ago. Over the years, it has been labeled a masterpiece and one of the best Isekai anime ever. I had to see it for myself, but all I can say is… Seriously?

Throughout 13 tedious episodes, I found a beautifully produced but ultimately poorly written anime. Although I liked the sound and art direction, I couldn't get invested in the plot or care about any of the characters. Despite the story's attempts at social commentary, it has a surprisingly 1-dimensional view ... of war. It presents war and violence with the subtlety of a wrecking ball that often feels more like shallow exploitation meant to disturb you.

The story is centered around a classical shounen hero: A boy named Shu. He's a free-spirited kid with a loud voice but a heart of gold. After losing a kendo tournament, Shu climbs on top of a smokestack to watch the sunset, pictured in the anime's poster. After nearly falling to his death, he spots a quiet blue-haired girl on a smokestack parallel to his. Suddenly both of them are surrounded by soldiers piloting flying bizarre snake mechas, ordered by a bitter woman attempting to kidnap the girl. Shu selflessly tries to save the girl while being shot at; his blind desire to help those in need gets him into much worse danger. In a burst of white light, the girl is summoned to another world by the soldiers. Shu is accidentally whisked along with them to a dystopian barren wasteland—this world is bathed in sunlight, sand, and rusted metal architecture similar to Mad Max's setting. This alternate reality is controlled by a brutal military composed of young men—which is often said to be inspired by child slave soldiers in the Congo wars (occurring simultaneously as the anime's production).

On Shu's first night in the foreign world, he is tortured by the comically over-the-top antagonist, King Hamdo—a sadistic villain who chokes cats and beats innocent people when he's upset. The King is an unpredictable antagonist because he's insane; there's no depth to his crazed persona. His goal is to find an ample water supply because the scorching hot sun has gravitated dangerously close to Earth. He needs water both for his soldiers and for "fuel" ala Mad Max. Please don't ask me how water is used as fuel, and the show certainly didn't give me an answer. A dead cat blocks half the frame throughout the torture scene to remind us how Evil this man is. It frequently dabbles in this variety of misery porn to disturb the audience, which the show succeeds at in the same way Cannibal Holocaust repulses ordinary viewers. I cannot comprehend how anyone could possibly take this character seriously. The series often juxtaposes over-the-top situations with bleak and depressing story beats. Violent abuse in the same episode as Shu exhibiting laughably non-existent survival instincts, the comic relief he almost falls to his death, and his sudden burst of super-strength (even after suffering a beating). His character is more akin to Naruto than a normal human being in a life-or-death situation.

Shu's primary motivation is to rescue the quiet blue-haired girl named Lala-ru. The pain he endures to save Lala-ru is unbelievable; he constantly risks his life to save someone he does not know. When he's asked why he keeps chasing after her, he is speechless; his reasoning is that they're friends, except they're not. They briefly met, and he knew nothing about her, but she asked him for help. He has a good heart, even sparing the life of his first enemy who tried to kill him. Though his intentions are always pure, his perusal of Lala-ru is obsessive and borderline unhinged.

(Spoilers below)

By the end of the first episode, Shu is defeated, lying on a metal floor, covered in bruises; beside him is the deuteragonist, a girl crying in pain. He attempts to jump on her, assuming he was Lala-ru due to their similar faces—immediately asking the question, why would he jump a girl he barely knew anyways? The crying girl is also from Earth, an American, but she speaks Japanese for reasons. Her name is Sarah Ringwald; She is both the most relatable but worst-written character in the show. At least Sarah is the only one to call out Shu for his overly idealistic personality, but that is one brief occasion that doesn't change his character in the slightest. She is sexually abused by soldiers off-screen, and Shu's response is to "Just forget about it." What's the metanarrative point? Nihilism? We already know the dystopian setting is cruel to outsiders, so why? If it was meant to characterize Sarah, then why were we alienated from her thoughts? If we can hear the thoughts of supporting characters, like Hondo's minion Ebillia, why can't we hear Sarah's? Sarah is irrelevant—forgotten by the story and Shu in favor of his irrational fixation with Lala-ru. Sarah wasn't the focus of her own abuse, and that's damning for a story attempting to make us empathize with a victim. All we see is her screaming and crying, and that's all.

When Shu suffers abuse, we at least hear his thoughts and understand how he feels, even though the portrayal of his trauma is shallow and the aftermath is short-lived. He quickly returns to being complacent and forgetting about trying to escape and rescue Lala-ru—instead, he continues to live as a prisoner until the plot demands he continues his journey. Only through lucky coincidences is he set on the correct path. Sarah was kidnapped because the soldiers thought she was the Lala-ru. Shu earnestly promises to escape with her, but unfortunately, this is ignored until the end.

(Spoilers end)

Shu is the hero of the story because he helps those in need, refuses to kill helpless criminals, and maintains his morals even when facing assassins. There's a dichotomy between him and Nabuka, the soldier he saved in the beginning. Shu refuses to follow orders, but Nabuka follows the rules no matter what. Through their contrasting choices, the story informs us of the mind prison caused by authoritarianism. Shu's unshakable morals show how expressing free will is the antithesis of authoritarianism. Nabuka believes the solution to war is genocide, making him as brain poisoned as the rest of the soldiers. The military has conditioned him. While Nabuka doesn't really grow as a person until the final act, Shu imparts heroic wisdom. There's an odd dichotomy in that Nabuka is inferior to Shu, who is seemingly perfect in the eyes of the narrative. Therefore he never grows. Every time Shu abides by his morals or breaks the rules, he or others get harmed—yet it is never treated like his fault because he has good intentions. Seeing him constantly get away with being foolish infuriates me. He kept making the same mistakes until the end. However, it's easy for me to root for a hero who protects those in need and has good intentions. Shu is just an idiot. If he has a choice between shooting someone and letting an orphanage get shot up, he will throw his gun on the ground and cry because the decision is too hard for his tiny brain to comprehend.

For a series entirely about war and its horrific impacts, it has a black and white idea of war. You're either good or evil. In this fictional world, victims of war, trauma, and abuse will suddenly monologue all of the horrible things that happened to them because of war. They lash out in anger, beating innocent people and making irrational choices to exact revenge. The way it views mental illness is detached from reality at best and offensive at worst. Nearly every character suffers from a mental disorder, so it is impossible to ignore: For one, villains brutally beat innocent people for no other reason than to relieve anger. Occasionally people will spout the origin of their trauma like they're at group therapy, one says side character say, "Soldiers kidnaped my sister. They left her in the desert. She died of dehydration. Eaten by animals." Then he proceeds to kick the shit out of a person who's trying to protect him. This kind of nihilistic portrayal of violence is juvenile, unrealistic, and a sign of terrible writing.

The main point is "War is bad." No matter how often the anime plays its one sad song, the theme does not become more complex. When praising this series, people often cite the mature subject matter and the beautiful production design—but neither of these aspects makes a story great. Art, animation, storyboards, music, and editing, enhance the narrative. In a series as slow-paced and artfully framed as this one, it leaves plenty of room for the viewer to make their interpretation, like Evangelion, Ergo Proxy, and Haibane Renmei. It has plenty of still close-ups, silent longshots, and characters staring solemnly at the sky. Remember the iconic elevator scene from Evangelion? Take that and do it every other episode, except with none of the emotional weight. One great appeal of Now and Then is its ambiguity—But I need to get invested in the characters and plot before analyzing the symbolism. While others may love it, to me, it was mind-numbingly dull and pretentious.

There is symbolism in this series, such as the water and flowers. Water symbolizes life, and flowers symbolize love. The themes boil down to "War is bad." Over and over. Sacrifice yourself for the war. If you like the story and characters, you can appreciate analyzing the symbolic framing and thoughtful storyboards. But without a good story or characters, there's no point in symbolism. The issue for me was, I despised every character. Shu was an idiot and made illogical choices. His infatuation with Lala-ru creeped me out. Lala-ru could sacrifice her life to save others but chooses not to because charity does not suit her if she will eventually get exploited. In Sarah's brief scenes, she cries and/or screams; she is forgotten by everyone (including the writers) until she returns to be used as an obstacle for Shu to overcome. Consequently, the writers used her as a mouthpiece to spurt pro-life ideology.

Now and Then, Here and There left me empty, frustrated, and utterly disappointed. There's no reward for suffering through this exercise in nihilism. As someone who has seen most modern isekai anime, I can say this one does not belong in any 'best of all time' conversations. It is a relic of a bygone era of anime that’s best left in the niche corners of the community.

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Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku

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Synopsis

Background

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Characters & Voice Actors

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Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

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