On Your Mark

Summary
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Two compassionate policemen found an unconscious angel at a garbage dump. While the other biohazard policemen wanted to dump her into the landfill, the main two checked to make sure she showed any sign of life. They gave their best to nourish her with these organic ingredients: love, care, and selflessness. After they narrowly escaped from the chaotic chase, they finally reached to the countryside to release the angel. The angel thanked the policemes as she flew happily to her heavenly homeland.
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~Scorecard~

Story & Theme: 10
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The story seemed like a simple DiD (damsel/dumbass-in-distress) rescuing tale, but portrayed with sincere humanity. Instead of forming a love triangle, ... the policemen nursed the angel until she was ready to be free again. There were no dialogue spoken, but the music animation was elegantly filmed. The characters' body languages were portrayed gracefully as well. These factors allowed us to understand the story in a correct order.

Enjoyment: 10
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The music video was entertaining and fun to watch. Since this was my first time sampling the video, I had no words to say how majestic it brought. The song was well performed by Chage & Asha. The song's message matched the video perfectly due to the battles and hardships the city and the main two policemen had to face. The most clever scene was the policemen disguising themselves as biohazard employees to rescue the angel and boldly escaped narrowly from their deaths. Breathless as the scene will be, it brought out the intensity for the trio to survive without getting captured. The emotional power was strong enough to feel as the song and story reached to the climax at the same time.

Emotions: 10
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The emotions put into this music video felt intense. It started off as stressful due to the policemen frantically hoping for the unconscious angel to survive. When the angel was taken away, they felt distressed and determined to find her. The chase in the biohazard/contamination facility became heated as we prayed for the good Samaritans to make the chase our alive. After the policemen fled from the madness, they drove to a wider space to let the angel fly freely into the clean skies and bid her farewell. The concluding scene brought us a sense of freedom and happiness. The officers' selfless acts made them feel happy and rewarded after the angel was launched away.

Animation: 8
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Hayao Miyazaki's animation and art style stayed the same, but I noticed there were some scenes recycled. I can understand the anime filmmakers wanted the music video and the song's duration time to be equal, but too much recycled animation sequences made the project seem less original. They basically made most of Hayao Miyazaki's films look outdated.

Overall: 9.5
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The music video was fun and endearing to all anime fans. It portrayed its morals with a good amount of humanity for movie and anime buffs who enjoy seeing the real message communicating about service and stewardship. As far as humanity goes, I noticed a sign inside the shelled city that read: "God is watching you." For a split second, I thought religious references were incorporated within the video. Continuing with discussing the sign's role, it defined that God was always looking out for His people who were trapped inside the war zone, just as He was protecting us from the ongoing quarantine madness. Back to the overall movie thoughts, I would've enjoyed the story more if it were a feature film. If it really became a feature film, I could've expect it to have decent dialogues and dramatic character performances than a short music film. Even so, the insert song for the short fits pretty well with the video's storyline.

I am Very Surprised that this isn't a trailer for a new movie. The first time I ever saw it was at an Anime Convention. I want to a Studio Ghibli panel and they showed this at the panel. It was amazing watching this music video. It's like I was being dragged through a fast pace version of a Studio Ghibli movie. When it was over, I literally asked if they were that wasn't a trailer for a movie. I'm actually kind of sad because that would have been a really interesting movie. I want to know more about this world. I want to know ... more about these characters.....This Music Video is only like 4 minutes long and it had a great effect on me. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a really good music video.

On Your Mark is a Miyazaki-directed Ghibli music video made for Chage & Aska's song of the same name. Miyazaki created this unusual side-project to escape from writer's block, and bafflingly interpreted the generic love song's lyrics into the story of the short movie. As you would guess, On Your Mark is a 6-minute heartwarming tale of a dystopian future where two police members raid a technologically advanced city laboratory and find a mutant angel girl and make a mission to set her free. Why not. It's a fairly chaotic mixture compared to Ghibli's usual takes on traditional fairy tales or coming-of-age dramas, but for ... that exact reason it roped me in easily with its aesthetics. I'm very disappointed that out of this studio's numerous projects that this concept wasn't made into a full-length feature. I find it potentially more interesting than almost anything they've done. Its inability to compare to the depth of detail of Ghibli's full movies end up crushing that advantage, but it's still an impressive effort for its scope. The backgrounds of the futuristic city for example contain so much minute detail that the entry shot feels absolutely massive, and this overwhelmingly large breadth of the setting continues in multiple other areas as well, such as the outside of the police's city and the plains of the ground. The emotional impact the short movie is going for doesn't fully gel together, since the lyrics are only vaguely related and otherwise we have only the basic conveyances of the feelings of the characters. This is something I recommend to be swept away in the visuals of it all and not much else, but those visuals go beyond just being pretty and have some slightly fascinating implications. A surprisingly inspired short, and I would've loved more of that inspiration.