I just came across your review. Would you mind explaining the “problem” of empathy encountered insofar as I observe there are a variety of cues to “prod” the viewer along a certain path?

Thanks a lot.

@Owen: Cheers. I’ll be reviewing 5cm in the next week or so but TBH Shinkai’s stuff leaves me…emotionally drained is the best way to describe it. Anyway, I’ll review it but it’ll be after I’ve gathered my thoughts and let it stew in my head for a few days first.

As for how it compares with 5cm, I’ll be covering that in length as part of my 5cm review but Place Promised feels more similar to Voices in that it’s a sci-fi romance movie while 5cm is a more pure romantic drama. Shinkai seems to ‘come of age’ as it were with 5cm, while this still needs to fall back onto sci-fi plot devices; it gives a stupendous emotional clout but the plot still leads the viewer by the nose. My experience with 5cm was less of “here’s a film maker leading me in a certain direction and a certain gamut of emotions.” and more of “here’s a situation…make of it what you will.”

Basically, Place Promised was a stunning and affecting film but not the endpoint of Shinkai’s learning curve as a director. No doubt I’ll be able to explain this more clearly when 1) I’ve not been drinking and 2) I’m not experiencing the emotional ‘afterglow’ of one of his movies. I’m not mentally - and sentimentally - ready to take on another one of his just yet!

I need to watch this show once more to see if my opinion of it’s changed much. I felt that it felt like an elongated trailer at times (yours truly having watched not one, not two, but four different trailers of it while waiting for it; see SUGOI HIKOUKI for more details), and my second viewing of it was rather “meh”. Of course, that was before I took up the “anime apologist” lens, and my first impressions of it might have been distorted somewhat.

Again, I find myself wondering, being in a rather loveless state then — did my lack of interaction with people in particular, seeing how I went through a sort-of social withdrawal phase, endear me less to it? I don’t know. But I suppose your post has motivated me to hunt down the show and watch it for what might be the last time in ages, because I think that while Shinkai did good with 5cm, he didn’t go higher than what The Place Promised did. He seems to have reached a plateau of sorts, and will be, if he doesn’t move on from the “distance” theme that we’re all heartily sick of by now.

I am jealous you got to see this in cinema, though. You lucky dog, you.