On Your Mark

Summary
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Two compassionate policemen found an unconscious angel at a garbage dump. While the other biohazard policemen wanted to dump her into the landfill, the main two checked to make sure she showed any sign of life. They gave their best to nourish her with these organic ingredients: love, care, and selflessness. After they narrowly escaped from the chaotic chase, they finally reached to the countryside to release the angel. The angel thanked the policemes as she flew happily to her heavenly homeland.
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~Scorecard~

Story & Theme: 10
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The story seemed like a simple DiD (damsel/dumbass-in-distress) rescuing tale, but portrayed with sincere humanity. Instead of forming a love triangle, ... the policemen nursed the angel until she was ready to be free again. There were no dialogue spoken, but the music animation was elegantly filmed. The characters' body languages were portrayed gracefully as well. These factors allowed us to understand the story in a correct order.

Enjoyment: 10
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The music video was entertaining and fun to watch. Since this was my first time sampling the video, I had no words to say how majestic it brought. The song was well performed by Chage & Asha. The song's message matched the video perfectly due to the battles and hardships the city and the main two policemen had to face. The most clever scene was the policemen disguising themselves as biohazard employees to rescue the angel and boldly escaped narrowly from their deaths. Breathless as the scene will be, it brought out the intensity for the trio to survive without getting captured. The emotional power was strong enough to feel as the song and story reached to the climax at the same time.

Emotions: 10
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The emotions put into this music video felt intense. It started off as stressful due to the policemen frantically hoping for the unconscious angel to survive. When the angel was taken away, they felt distressed and determined to find her. The chase in the biohazard/contamination facility became heated as we prayed for the good Samaritans to make the chase our alive. After the policemen fled from the madness, they drove to a wider space to let the angel fly freely into the clean skies and bid her farewell. The concluding scene brought us a sense of freedom and happiness. The officers' selfless acts made them feel happy and rewarded after the angel was launched away.

Animation: 8
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Hayao Miyazaki's animation and art style stayed the same, but I noticed there were some scenes recycled. I can understand the anime filmmakers wanted the music video and the song's duration time to be equal, but too much recycled animation sequences made the project seem less original. They basically made most of Hayao Miyazaki's films look outdated.

Overall: 9.5
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The music video was fun and endearing to all anime fans. It portrayed its morals with a good amount of humanity for movie and anime buffs who enjoy seeing the real message communicating about service and stewardship. As far as humanity goes, I noticed a sign inside the shelled city that read: "God is watching you." For a split second, I thought religious references were incorporated within the video. Continuing with discussing the sign's role, it defined that God was always looking out for His people who were trapped inside the war zone, just as He was protecting us from the ongoing quarantine madness. Back to the overall movie thoughts, I would've enjoyed the story more if it were a feature film. If it really became a feature film, I could've expect it to have decent dialogues and dramatic character performances than a short music film. Even so, the insert song for the short fits pretty well with the video's storyline.

I am Very Surprised that this isn't a trailer for a new movie. The first time I ever saw it was at an Anime Convention. I want to a Studio Ghibli panel and they showed this at the panel. It was amazing watching this music video. It's like I was being dragged through a fast pace version of a Studio Ghibli movie. When it was over, I literally asked if they were that wasn't a trailer for a movie. I'm actually kind of sad because that would have been a really interesting movie. I want to know more about this world. I want to know ... more about these characters.....This Music Video is only like 4 minutes long and it had a great effect on me. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a really good music video.

There`s a marked difference between something that is designed around and flows with music like Comedy, and something that is jerked around by it the way On Your Mark is. The incoherence in On Your Mark`s chronology and reality feels less like an artistic choice that has a meaningful effect on the final product and more like a story that had to be chopped and tinkered with in order to fit the music. The climactic scene where the two heroes drive down a country road and guide the Angel on her first flight in a long while, if not ever, is certainly a beautiful and ... memorable scene, but for no reason other than to catch the first chorus, it`s actually put out of chronological order and thrown in early on.

Certainly, the first chorus begs for something dramatic, but a tiny bit of creativity, for instance, creating and showing a different warm scene between the 3 characters, would have kept the integrity of the finale. As it stands, the second time that very same scene is shown is the more important of the two, but its effect is dampened because it is the second showing of the very same thing.

On Your Mark tries to tell such a complex story while squirming through musical obstacles that it feels like an AMV someone cut from a much larger story. Where most films of this length would simply focus on one aspect of the characters and tell a very basic story, On Your Mark tries to compress a whole drama in all its emotional complexity, without dialogue, constrained by musical cues, into 7 minutes. The characters just end up feeling empty.

It`s perfectly fine as a music video, since most of them are incoherent, and if they`re sappy, they usually take that to excess. It`s just disappointing because the story could have amounted to something more cohesive and satisfying with small reworkings. Instead of telling the whole boys meet girl story, scrap or very briefly touch upon the meeting, and focus completely on the actual relationship. There is just too much stuff going on. Approaching it simply as a music video though, it contains a gorgeous and emotionally affecting scene the likes of which has never been seen accompanying a pop song. Disappointing as it is, On Your Mark is still something I can reliably use to drag out a bitter-sweet tear when I feel the need.

Notes on the music: It`s soft rock and sounds quite good, but the lyrics don`t have very obvious ties with the animation. The song focuses on the glories of youth and nostalgia for it. The English version is much more in line with the general theme as it is about a deep and binding relationship that can be used as a support system when things get messy. You normally wouldn`t expect translated songs to be well written, but the lyrics in the chorus are surprisingly touching.