The Place Promised in Our Early Days

Sayuri says more than once, “I always have this feeling that I’m losing something,” and that feeling defines the entire movie. In a dystopian Japan, three friends promise to fly toward a tower in Hokkaido in a plane they built together, but reality proves stronger than their promise. The story is emotional and complex at times because it makes you think about those moments in life when you lose something and do not know if you will ever get it back. The music is perfectly placed. It appears exactly when you are meant to feel something, but the silence is just as powerful. The absence of music in specific moments is magnificent. The story leaves the viewer with unresolved questions, but maybe that means there is something more important to pay attention to.

Before Your Name and Weathering with You, The Place Promised in Our Early Days served as the blueprint of Makoto Shinkai signature style. This film is a beautiful, melancholic blend of sci fi and romance. The movie itself is still flawed for me, It lacks the narrative of Shinkai’s later works, but it kinda? overflows with passion, aesthetics, and beautiful sense of longing that Shinkai ussually manage to captures better than anyone else in his later works. It's a solid one for me with it's own minus.

I am deeply moved by the melancholic beauty of this film. Seeing Hiroki and Takuya build that white airplane together while dreaming of the mysterious tower is incredibly nostalgic. However Sayuri drifting into her deep sleep broke my heart cause it pulls them all apart so painfully...