While the world of this anime managed to suck me in from episode 1, accompanied by an interesting premise that quickly builds up the tension, as I kept watching, the setbacks it suffered from became more apparent.
This sort of setting requires a cast of flawed characters who have been impacted by the hopeless world around them, but that type of decent characterization was surprisingly sparse. We have people like Abelia who spend their days enacting the nefarious whims of others even when they're not as bad as those above them. But how did she get to that point? Why does she act so servile? You'll be asking these questions even after the series ends because, despite her unique position in the conflict and plot, Abelia's never truly given the time of day. She's merely another tool for a genocidal dictator who is so incompetent and irredeemable that you'd want to punch your screen every time he shows up. The lack of nuance in portraying anything beyond a villainous, screeching man-baby as the main antagonist in this supposedly "mature" anime is astounding, and these are just two examples. This issue persists in other facets of the show as well.
At some point, the core question that drives the narrative is revealed. Fight back against the dictator, or live in peace, ignoring the atrocities around you because you want your children to have a good life. From there, motherhood is brushed over, giving value to protecting children who are blameless in war and don't deserve to suffer if conflicts were to escalate. Overall, it's a nice mesh of thought-provoking ideas that can elevate any show to a masterful depiction of humanity and their urge for violence... if executed correctly.
Well, that's too bad.
In this anime, the narrative is slanted in favor of a pacifistic yet complacent view, which in itself is not a bad thing. I can think of a few other series that also do this (most notably Vinland Saga). But where Now and Then fumbles and Vinland succeeds is the execution and the nuanced portrayal of the opposing mindsets. Another thing that sets them apart is that the people preaching for peace in Now and Then, Here and There are nobodies. They hold no power or leverage. How would doing nothing be a solution in that situation? Their mindset, while not unfounded, has issues that the series crashes into but refuses to address.
The opposing force to our pacifists, a rebellious group that aims to take down the dictator is mostly portrayed as bloodthirsty kidnappers who are in the wrong. But when aiming to kill one irredeemable man to save millions of innocents, can this dilemma really be reduced to "They're resorting to violence, therefore they're bad"? There's a singular scene where they're spared any sympathy. Just one. The rest of their depiction hinges on them being unreasonable douchebags.
Another clear pitfall to the pacifism is the fact that the big, bad dictator's main military resource is children from villages he's decimated. How can we act like living peacefully in a hidden place protects children when many of them are suffering on the ship, under his rule? All the kids on that ship should have trauma - not just the select few that the writers decided would be good friends with the MC. While the situation did highlight one of the few well-rounded characters in the show (Nabuca), we also had characters like Tabool, who again, boils down to an unsympathetic "bad guy" yearning to assert his power over everyone. The show goes as far as vilifying these kids when they should have been handled with more care. They've struggled due to the brutality of war just like everyone else, and maybe by the time they've encountered Shu, they've reached a point where violence is second nature to them. Now and Then, Here and There doesn't negate the possibility of them being molded by their circumstances, but it also presents them in a grossly simplified way, while giving them some of the most cartoonish Disney villain lines in existence. They eventually get somewhat disregarded by the narrative, which puts an end to any interesting exploration before it gets the chance to begin.
Overall, Now and Then, Here and There's solution to a lot of its conflicts is waving away all the antagonists through a series of conveniences, and proclaiming the protagonist and his friends as the ultimate good guys. The gruesome things shown early on don't amount to much as our MC insists on forgiving and forgetting. They're there to make the show seem darker and more mature when thematically, it's none of those things. All it did was resort to the most juvenile kind of black-and-white moral grandstanding. One of the MC's sidekicks (Lala Ru), is even indirectly provoking the persistence of war and leading to many deaths due to her refusal to do anything despite her immense power. This is never addressed. She never acts violently, and she never directly tries to harm people. So in the writers' eyes, she's a great person and there's no need to question her behavior when it's clearly very questionable.
TLDR; This anime may get sold as a gritty portrayal of war, as it handles serious subject matters like child soldiers, brutal authoritarianism, and rape. But by the end of it, it didn't feel like any of its themes were given the weight they deserved, and all it did was resort to a juvenile black-and-white presentation of characters and their morality. This is something you'd expect from a children's show with some "dark subjects" sprinkled in there to add some spice. Its saving grace is that it's short enough, and has a good amount of moving parts to where it doesn't get too tedious. You could also find around two decent characters in there if you squint hard enough. I didn't get much from watching it, but it's also not a complete waste of time. If you happen to like artistic, philosophical, and "dark" series to begin with, you can give it a go. I did find it thought-provoking albeit in all the wrong ways.
