Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho

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Alternative Titles

English: The Place Promised in Our Early Days

Synonyms: Beyond the Clouds, The Promised Place

Japanese: 雲のむこう、約束の場所

Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Nov 20, 2004

Producers: None found, add some

Licensors: ADV Films

Studios: CoMix Wave Films

Source: Original

Genres: Drama, Military, Romance, Sci-Fi

Duration: 1 hr. 30 min.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 7.54¹ (scored by 79,138 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1462²

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

Popularity: #873

Members: 182,270

Favorites: 729

7.54

Ranked #1462Popularity #873Members 182,270

MovieCoMix Wave Films

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Episodes: /1

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Synopsis

Hiroki Fujisawa and Takuya Shirakawa harbor admiration for two things in their life: their classmate Sayuri Sawatari and the vast Ezo Tower that stands boundlessly across the Tsugaru Strait. Fascinated by the limitless structure beyond their reach, Hiroki and Takuya begin constructing an aeroplane from a fallen drone they discovered—naming it the Bella Ciela—to fulfill their dream of one day reaching the sky-scraping top of the tower. Later joined by the girl they love, Hiroki and Takuya promise Sayuri to fly with her to the seemingly otherworldly top together. However, Japan has suffered a North-South partitioning that has fueled conflict near the base of the tower, which marks the border between the America-controlled Southern islands and the Northern lands occupied by the Soviet Union.

Further along, Sayuri suddenly disappears, and Hiroki and Takuya never see her again. Unbeknownst to them, she fell victim to a sleeping disorder that left her comatose for the past three years. Although Hiroki and Takuya later learn about Sayuri's condition, they also discover that the girl's unconscious state is oddly linked to the same tower the trio had promised to conquer together.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:

Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Sawatari, Sayuri

Main

Nanri, Yuuka
Japanese

Fujisawa, Hiroki

Main

Yoshioka, Hidetaka
Japanese

Shirakawa, Takuya

Main

Hagiwara, Masato
Japanese

Okabe

Supporting

Ishizuka, Unshou
Japanese

Tomizawa, Tsuneo

Supporting

Inoue, Kazuhiko
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Shinkai, Makoto

Producer, Director, Sound Director, Script, Storyboard, Theme Song Lyrics, Executive Producer, Color Design, Original Creator, Editing

Foster, Steven

Script, ADR Director

Tenmon

Theme Song Composition, Theme Song Arrangement, Music

Kawashima, Ai

Theme Song Performance

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Opening Theme

No opening themes have been added to this title. Help improve our database by adding an opening theme here.

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Ending Theme

"Kimi no Koe" by Kawashima, Ai

More reviews

Reviews

Jun 25, 2008

1 of 1 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 9

TheLlama (All reviews)

392 people found this review helpful

The Place Promised starts out with a very tranquil slice of life setting, but don't get fooled by first appearances. It soon takes on a more dramatic tone, with a sense of sci.fi. over it too, depending on which of the two male leads' story it's currently following. With the dreams of the female lead poppign in here and there, you have three fantastic story which grabs you on a deep, emotional level, and it all ends with blending the three together in one splendid end scene, which I'll remember a long time.

The characters in The Place Promised are fantastic, deep and lifelike. Note the read more

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Mar 17, 2007

1 of 1 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 9

Faust721 (All reviews)

155 people found this review helpful

Makoto Shinkai's first feature-lengthed work - The Place Promised in Our Early Days.

Story: Just like Voices in a Distant Star and 5 Centimeters Per Second, this is a story about 2 people and their distances. Unlike Voices where their distance is that of time and space, Place Promised is about their distance across dimensions/dreams/reality. What I like about this concept is how well Shinkai presented it. Sayuri (our heroine) is physically in the world, but spiritually trapped in another. It is very touching to see Hiroki (our hero) search for Sayuri knowing that she is very close yet at the same time very far away read more

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Apr 4, 2008

1 of 1 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 6

slpless (All reviews)

148 people found this review helpful

I watched Makoto Shinkai’s first major work, Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star) a year before watching this. Hoshi no Koe was nothing short of breathtaking. The animation, pacing, and plot were all top notch and even more surprising, it was essentially done by one person. After way too many delays, The Place of Promise in Our Early Days was finally released.

My initial impression was, ohh pretty. The animation was fantastic; everything was clean, crisp, and vivid. Although, sometimes a bit too clean, crisp, and vivid. This is especially true for the interior backgrounds. I think of a brand new shinny kitchen appliance with I see some of the interior backgrounds. However, the "nature" shots didn't give me that impression. Overall, the animation was very beautiful and well done.

As for the music....well it was pretty good, as expected of Tenmon however, it really didn’t stand out.

The rest however, doesn't really fare as well. As I watching I couldn't help get the feeling that he was trying to do the same thing he did with Hoshi no Koe. Hoshi no Koe was 30 min short exploring the theme of "long distance love." Being a short film it really didn't have much of a plot, nor did it attempt to. The Place of Promise in our Early Days on the other hand seemed like it was going to explore a theme like Hoshi no Koe did yet the same time try to tell a concrete story. This produced a horribly paced movie. First its going nice and slow producing this calm nostalgic feel. Then things move too fast and you're wondering what happened. Essentially the pace is too fast and too slow all at once. The movie should have only been 50 minutes at most. Interestingly enough was what was originally planned out to be. I felt this was a very good 50 min OVA, then scenes were made longer and added extra stuff (ie the sci-fi stuff) to make this mediocre 90 min movie.

Because of the lack of focus the characters suffered quite a bit. Their relationships weren’t explored enough nor did I feel there was any depth to them. In addition, I wasn’t convinced of the love between Sayuri and Hiroki. Once again they didn’t spend enough time on the characters.

The Place of Promise in our Early Days is a beautifully animated film with lush and vivid detailed. However, it sometimes suffers from being too clean and vivid, giving it that new shinny kitchen appliance look. The music was excellent but not memorable. The Place of Promise in our Early Days suffer fatally from its poor pacing that makes the movie feel too fast and too slow at the same time.

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Jun 9, 2011

1 of 1 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 5

Fangz (All reviews)

73 people found this review helpful

This film gets 5/10, because it's almost exactly one half of a perfect film.

Let's start with the good parts and get them over and done with. The artistry is outstanding. Sound design is great. Character animation is only average, but that's plainly not the creator's focus so that doesn't matter. You can write pages and pages on how painterly Shinkai's work is, how any single frame of the film can be picked out and put on the wall as a work of genuine art.

But.

A film needs more than that to be an actual film. It needs a story, and believable characters, and this is where the film really falls down. The primary motivations, and actions of the characters may be convenient for framing the scenes Shinkai shows us, but on closer examination, simply fails to make sense.

Let's pick out one character. Okabe, the mentor to our main protagonists. We learn that he was separated from his family in Ezo by the separation, which led to him becoming a terrorist leader to fight the Union. So, his whole plan then is to strike at the Tower. Then when the heroes come to him, he lets them fly the missile and destroy the tower instead, after they show him their 'determination'.

Wait what?

How could a man whose entire life is lived due to the separation from his family agree to an operation which stands a high chance of destroying the entire world and by the end of the film, probably actually killed his entire family? That gigantic hole in Ezo isn't just for show. Why would he put everything into the single basket of the experimental plane built by a couple of highschoolers? Why can't they fly the UAV as well as the plane?

Look closely and the entire substance of the show is cardboard. Characters react to the start of WWII - with an unprovoked declaration of war by the US on the Union with total apathy, instead of, well, horror. The US declare war because of the Tower, but don't actually mount any direct attacks on it. The security on a classified research facility in which rests a woman whose staying asleep keeps the entire world in existence is surmounted by a single guy with a broken arm and a stolen keycard. The Union scientist who designed the tower decides for no apparent reason to make a device - at enormous expense - that will either destroy the world, or send his granddaughter into a coma, *and then* destroy the world when she dies.

Look at the frames of this film, and you're notice an interesting thing. The characters are rarely in the middle of the image. They flit in and out, hang around the peripheries, slanted or small. Sometimes their voices are silenced. Sometimes they just aren't there at all. It's like they are just guests, lucky children given a chance to play with the director's fabulous fabulous toys.

Shinkai needs a writer. Needs one badly.

Z.

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