Makoto is renowned for his narrative simplicity and stylistic detail: the viewer should expect a gently-delivered and largely "unexciting" story (until the final quarter of the film). Die-hard action-adventure fans are advised to keep their distance. What battles and mecha are absent from Makoto's work are wonderfully compensated with perfect art. Makoto's colors are something else: brave, original, unpretentious, and strongly conducive to speechlessness. More so than in "Voices of a distant star" and "5 cm per second," music in "Promised Place" is of a more theatric, but equally unearthly quality. Art and score combined produce an intensely "otherworldly" aura.
The characters of "The Place Promised in Our Early Days" are rather stationary, and similar to those in Makoto's other productions, are young, quiet, wounded, idealistic, and marvellously uninteresting - a return to realism from the moe/angst-fest unfortunately common to mainstream anime. Above other merits, characters here (and elsewhere in Makoto's projects) are representative (without explicitly stating so) of good sense, human integrity, and beautiful resilience to losing love, being alone, and growing up. Recommended to all admirers of "introspection" and maturity in anime.
