Harmony

In 2019, following an uprising in the USA and a subsequent global nuclear war, humanity was decimated by a catastrophe called "The Maelström." A half-century after this cataclysmic event—to preserve humankind—the World Health Organization (WHO) has progressively assimilated worldwide political power and completely redefined society: people are now considered public resources and are guaranteed a happier life. The heightened development of medicine, nanomachine technology, and augmented reality promote this greater devotion to human health.

Suffocated by the excessive kindness of Japanese society, high school student Miach Mihie decides to oppose the societal values she considers dehumanizing before the health implant surveillance system WatchMe activates itself the day she turns 18. Miach plans to kill herself with two of her friends, Tuan Kirie and Cian Reikadou. However, Cian betrays the pact in disagreement with Miach's intentions, allowing Tuan to survive her suicide attempt, unlike Miach, who is declared dead.

Thirteen years later, now a high-ranking inspector of Helix—an organization affiliated with WHO to monitor military conflicts—Tuan is sent back to Japan after her drug smuggling activities in the Niger warzone are discovered by senior Helix inspector Oscar Stauffenberg. On her first day back to the country she tried running away from, thousands of people simultaneously commit suicide. Tuan is now in charge of investigating this wave of mass suicide and exposing the terrorist organization behind the unprecedented attack.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Mihie, Miach Main

Ueda, Reina Japanese

Kirie, Tuan Main

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Stauffenberg, Oscar Supporting

Sakakibara, Yoshiko Japanese

Reikadou, Cian Supporting

Suzaki, Aya Japanese

Asaph Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Étaín, Gabrielle Supporting

Watanabe, Akeno Japanese

Mihie, Reiko Supporting

Mori, Chiaki Japanese

Woll, Uwe Supporting

Ono, Atsushi Japanese

Saeki, Keita Supporting

Cho Japanese

Vasilov, Elijah Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Yoshizawa, Takashi Producer

Ozaki, Noriko Producer

Kurosaki, Shizuka Assistant Producer

Reviews

Apr 3, 2016

JJHRTD

Recommended

Okay, here we go. Hmm, there will be minor spoilers, but I think it won't hurt anyone who haven't watched it (most of it are already in the synopsis).

Story (8/10)
I have to admit that Harmony give us an interesting concept of a futuristic world. In Harmony, humans has advanced to the level that they have defeated disease and aging. A system called 'Watch Me' also guide humans to have a perfect healthy life and follow the social ethics (well, you'll see more feature of this system by watching the movie). The only minus of this 'Watch Me' is your life can be watched by the ... government.

Life with no disease and death is amazing right? It's heaven. Well, for most peole that is. Being watched and trapped by system made Miach, a friend of Tuan Kirie(our protagnist), felt that she lost her identity and freedom. Finally, Miach along with Kirie and one of her friend decided to commit suicide. Tuan was saved, but Miach was reported dead.

13 years later, Tuan becomes Inspector of Spiral (watched from Indonesian subtitle, don't really know the name in English, well, some kind of top world organization that manage world order or something). While being off duty and once again back in Japan, a sudden mass suicide incident that robbed thousands of humans life happened. How could this incident happen in a supposedly perfect society? Is there a connection between this incident and Miach's suicide incident? Once again, Tuan will have to face her buried past and put an end to it.

I have to remind the watcher that this movie has many complex dialogues and the pace is rather slow. That aside, this movie brings us an interesting world and questions what does it mean to be human and explores a complex mind of a human in an interesting way. The movie also managed to serve a mysterious atmosphere that might please people who loves a mystery sci-fi films.

Characters (8/10)
Harmony mostly explore the character of Tuan Kirie, our main protagonist. The movie is seen from Tuan's perspective, and there are a lot of monologues. We rarely get a clear picture of other characters except for one. Tuan's way of thinking and mental conflict is presented well as we can see from her monologues and flashback.

Something that could be praised from Harmony is that the movie managed to give a complex and interesting characterization of Miach from Tuan's flashback and monologues. We see how complex Miach's logic is from her old conversation with Tuan. The movie also built the background of Miach rather well and we can see why Miach developed that strange logic.

Art & Sound (8/10 & 7/10)
I usually don't pay much attention to the animation/art and sound so I'll keep this short. I like the characters design and the shape of the futuristic world. Eventhough sometimes the people on the anime sometimes replaced with CG animation, the movie still looks very good. The BGM managed to build a mysterious atmosphere along the film, but unfortunately there are almost no music that builds an intense situation. Oh, and if you're a fan of Sawashiro Miyuki you're very welcome to watch this show.

Enjoyment (7.5/10)
Seeing the score of Harmony movie is 6.96 on MAL made me doubt the quality of the movie. Even so I tried to watch it and before I knew it I was glued in front of the screen. I'd say my enjoyment is 7.5/10. Could be higher but I'm not really fond of the ending haha.

Overall, 8/10. This movie has flaws and people have different opinions. Still, I hope my review would be helpful to you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Apr 27, 2016

chevybow

Mixed Feelings

Indeed I was quite excited to notice that Harmony was finally available, subbed, on my favorite streaming site. I've been anticipating this movie ever since I first heard about it. What I got, opposed to my expectations, was a mediocre film wrapped in beautiful visuals, animation and sound.

The story begins with a red haired girl named Tuan Kirie who is first seen doing some sort of illegal operation with a refuge group. We then learn about the setting that our story takes place- a future utopian society in the very distant future. The world is supposedly perfect as issues such as disease are no ... longer a concern. The narrative is told through the perspective of Tuan: both in present and via flashbacks.

The most important thing to note about the story is the complexity of it- and I must say- if I have one major complaint it is that the movie did no justice to the story. The execution of the story was pretty poor and the movie would require many re watches in order to fully comprehend it without looking up explanations online. I feel that the enjoyment of this show will be lost to most who will be unable to fully understand the story. I don't mean this in a condescending way- as I only grasped parts of the story myself and was left clueless at many parts.

The other main character we learn about is Miach who is the main character's childhood friend. We learn about Miach mostly through the flashbacks of Tuan, which has its pro's and con's. I for one believed Miach to be the most interesting character of the series and the most meaningful philosophic statements to be expressed were expressed in scenes dealing with Miach. Unfortunately, she barely resembles a main character as she gets little screentime in the present day Utopian world.

Without spoiling anything about the story that isn't basically given in either the first couple minutes or the synopsis- I can only mention that the ending was another great disappointment to this show. Not that I didn't like it necessarily- but because it felt incomplete and anti-climactic. The show felt like it was progressing towards the ending which would be epic and mind-blowing and what we got instead was confusion along with disappointment.

While the characters are interesting- many of them are too complex to relate to and sometimes- even after learning a great deal about them- their actions are unpredictable and hard to interpret. The ending is a great example of this- but there are many moments in the show where your perceptions about a given character will change suddenly due to an out-of-the-blue action.

The pacing for this show is another major problem for me as the beginning was ridiculously slow to the point where the person I was watching it with got bored and uninterested. Meanwhile- the ending felt pretty fast paced whereas I would have liked there to be more substance near the end of the show. You watch through this show hoping there will be more but you just receive more vagueness and ambiguity.

While the writing suffers and can be super confusing and hard to interpret: the production value of this show is amazing. The visuals, animation, and sound are all above average and quite excellent at times. The stunning visuals are apparent from the beginning of the series and some breathtakingly gorgeous shots are presented later in the film.

But a film with great appearance cannot fix broken writing. I DO recommend this show for people who are looking to challenge themselves intellectually. If you like works like Paprika and Penguindrum perhaps this movie will be up your alley. But I fear that for most, the story was presented in such a way that it is hard to keep up. With complex dialogue and narration- many people will feel lost without looking to the internet for an explanation for this movie. And having to look up what happens in a movie kills the enjoyment for me.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Apr 28, 2016

TheAnimeToast

Not Recommended

Quickly said Harmony is a pretty boring movie about a person traveling around the world, being infodumped by every character she meets while trying to solve a case she's working on.
There's lots of philosophical themes in the movie, many of which go nowhere and aren't really explored beyond talking about them.
It's great material if you're an over thinker and actual like sitting on your ass for two hours while boring characters read textbooks to you.
Note that the rest of the review can contain spoilers.

-Presentation (Visuals & Sound).
I was actually kind of surprised at how they seamlessly connect the CGI and the hand drawn characters at ... some points.
It was good to see some CGI that didn't just appear awkward.
Of course the CGI still sticks out at points, but at other times I found myself questioning if the character in front of me was hand drawn or a model.
It can look a bit cheap the way they just spin the camera around the characters when nothing other visually interesting is happening on screen, but when it want's to look good it looks really good.

I heard that EGOIST is the theme song performer, which makes sense because there is only one memorable song in the entire movie, the others would fit into any generic Science fiction story, or any generic action scene.
I didn't actually notice that much music in the Movie.

-Story & Characters.
Harmony is a movie that tries way too hard too seem deep and meaningful by essentially quoting philosophy textbooks and telling some of the story through flashbacks and heavy internal monologues.

Every character in the movie exist either to infodump the MC and the viewer or to be infodumped to by other characters, which immediately after they either disappear from the movie and aren't brought back again or die.
The story itself is nothing new, a "utopian future", in which everyone is in strict control of the government, this seems to be a rising trend in current settings.
And you're supposed to question if it is right to control people if they're happy and such.
The plot is almost exclusively told through dull infodumps in dialogue scenes, flashbacks and internal monologues.

There is a little attempted symbolism but it's mostly so blatant that I question why its even there.
Despite the constant infodumping and terminology, very little actually happens on screen in this movie, and everything is resolved quite hastily at the very end.
The movie tried very hard to be deep, but was scared that if they didn't tell the viewer absolutely everything they might not understand the movie.
If you have seen a movie in forever you already know all the possible "twists" it could throw your way already.

There were no interesting characters in the entire movie, the closest we get to that is our main character's friend Miach, appears throughout the movie in flashbacks, her character is that she is 15, very edgy and has a lesbian relationship with Tuan, the main character.

Speaking of Tuan, she has very little personality and mostly works as the eyes, or rather the ears for the viewer.
The most interesting thing about her character is that she's kind of good at fighting with guns.
She almost seems to be stuck in some kind of a video game dialogue tree, where if a character presents a plot point or an unconnected philosophical theme she can only say
"tell me more" "tell me more".

Every single other character exists to either infodump or die.
Forget character development, even establishing basic quirks was too much for this movie.
And I wouldn't complain so much about the characters if the story was halfway decent, or even interestingly told, but it's not.

-Final thoughts.
I don't hate the movie despite the way this review might sound like, it was just extremely boring and told almost only though exposition.
Especially the characters were dull.
The visuals were actually pretty good and there's one song that I actually liked, but that isn't even close to redeeming this movie.
I can't really even recommend Harmony as a popcorn flick, it has far too few action scenes for that.
You honestly miss nothing by skipping this one.

Update: Post-review thoughts.
After making this review I noticed it was directed by Michael Arias, a non-Japanese person working in the anime industry.
This made me interested the other movie he directed, Tekkon Kinkreet which is a much better movie and I would recommend it over this one.
I do like this Arias as a director, but he was clearly held back by the source material here.

Speaking of the source material, something I forgot to mention is that some things in this movie can actually be explained by just saying "because it looks cool".
Why is everything pink?
Why is there a random sunflower farm in the middle of the desert?
why do people dress weirdly in the future?
It's not a bad thing to include cool stuff in your movie of course, but here it also doesn't really add to the themes or the story either.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	I really want someone who has read to book to explain this to me APolygons2 - Dec 15, 2022	6 replies	by JaniSIr »» Jul 16, 2:18 PM
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