Noein: Mou Hitori no Kimi e

During their last summer of elementary school, four friends decide to undertake a test of courage at their local graveyard. Before the test begins, Haruka Kaminogi makes a last effort to pull Yuu Gotou away from his controlling mother. While doing so, Haruka suddenly has a strange vision of blue snow followed by the appearance of an imposing silver-haired man. Later, a similar vision occurs at the graveyard to both Haruka and her friends before they try to escape what they assume are ghosts.

Unbeknownst to the children, the people who appeared before them are Dragon Soldiers: an elite military group from a dimension known as La'cryma. The soldiers have traveled to this dimension to secure the "Dragon Torque"—an entity they believe to be their last hope for survival. However, both the Dragon Soldiers and Haruka are shocked to learn that the Dragon Torque is Haruka herself. She attempts to escape from the Dragon Soldiers as she finds her own last ray of hope—the strange silver-haired man who claims to be another version of Yuu himself.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Karasu Main

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Kaminogi, Haruka Main

Kudou, Haruka Japanese

Gotou, Yuu Main

Takimoto, Fujiko Japanese

Noein Main

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Atori Supporting

Suzumura, Kenichi Japanese

Tobi Supporting

Shiraishi, Ryouko Japanese

Fujiwara, Isami Supporting

Miyata, Kouki Japanese

Fukurou Supporting

Kiyasu, Kouhei Japanese

Lily Supporting

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Hasebe, Ai Supporting

Chiba, Saeko Japanese

Kawamura, Hiroshi Producer

Kasai, Tsutomu Producer

Akane, Kazuki Director, Script, Storyboard, Creator

Aketagawa, Jin Sound Director

Reviews

Jan 10, 2023

Purjoloek

Recommended

Noein: Mou Hitori no Kimi e is a lovely little show revolving around a group of children who have their world changed by invaders from a foreign dimension. The easiest parallel I can give you is that it's basically an anime cousin of Stranger Things.

The series focuses on the relationship between Haruka and Yuu. Both come from more or less broken families and have been friends since they met. Haruka is outgoing and friendly, while familial circumstances and social pressure has turned Yuu into a loner who wants nothing more than to grow up and leave town. Haruka is also a being called the Dragon ... Torque, which grants her certain (limited) reality-bending powers, that make her the target for a group of foreign invaders from the world of La'cryma - invaders that have surprisingly strong ties to them and their group of friends. Haruka forms a quick and deep connection with one of them called Karasu, who seems intent on protecting her.

Noein shines when it focuses on the kids and their reactions to the wild events of the story, as well as Haruka and Yuu's relationship with Karasu. Haruka struggles to connect with Yuu on a deeper level, and Yuu finds it hard to measure up to the fully grown and capable protector that is Karasu. The kids are all likeable and have relatable struggles with their connections to each-other and growing up.

The series starts to struggle a bit when it opens up the wold a bit more and showing you different vantage points of the whole story. While parts of them are interesting - that is, the parts that aren't complete pseudoscience gobbledegook - they take away from the heart of the series which is the children themselves. Similar to how a horror villain/monster often gets less scary the more is revealed about them, here the story gets more and more bogged down with uninteresting detail that isn't directly relevant to the children (as in, they don't need to know about quantum bullshit to progress the story) and takes more and more screen time away from the actual interesting parts of the story, which are mainly the relationships.

There are several adult characters that show up and explain the circumstances of the setting to the viewers, but they are rarely very interesting and their stories are often more than a bit disconnected from the core of the show. There's also a fair bit of politics about capitalism in the series that aren't exactly bad, but just feel like they come from a completely different show. There's even a sort-of Elon Musk stand in, who initially feels to cartoonish - until you realise it's a pretty accurate caricature of a childing billionaire who wants to the THE GUY without knowing his stuff. Ultimately he's such a tonal mismatch to the show that he feels wasted. The stakes that are attempted to be raised by the adult storyline doesn't really matter when positioned next to the central storyline and its events.

Speaking of adults, it's plain to see the effects that Haruka and Yuu's mothers have had on their lived. Yuu's father is abscent and Haruka's father lives in Tokyo so they both have single mothers. Yuu's mother is presented as the bad one, and she certainly is horrible. She wants him to study hard so he can go to a prestigious school in Tokyo, while struggling with her past and taking things out on Yuu, pressuring him to perform and isolating him from his friends. Haruka's mum is framed as the better parent, but this falters a bit when you shine a light on her behaviour. She basically locks herself away and works from home all day long. She sleeps in and doesn't take care of herself that well, to the point where Haruka has to cook and clean for her. In a way, it's not too bad for Haruka to develop some independence while young, but it's plain to see that being on her own without real limits and parental teaching has affected her emotional intelligence and she struggles to understand many of the relationships around her, and is reckless with her own personal freedom and self-sacrificing to a fault. It's especially evident how unreliable Haruka's parent is during one event where Haruka is missing and her friends are out searching for her together with their teacher. At no point during that event is Haruka's mother contacted to assist in the search or even be informed of her daughter's disappearance. The assumption lands at nobody really trusting her with auch responsibility.

Onto the aesthetic stuff: The voice acting is mostly very good, and has to do a lot of heavy lifting. Some performers are a bit miscast, such as the very recognisable Nakai Kazuya as Karasu who doesn't work very well with that part, imo. The music in the show in general is lovely and services the story well. The sweeping, orchestral score gives the exciting scenes way more of an impact. The art is generally pretty horrible, I'm sad to say. At times the barebones animation can work well, but the show is honestly quite ugly a lot of the time. Especially a few episodes in as the production quality takes an absolute nosedive.

All in all, I think it's certainly a show well worth watching, and one I recommend.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 11, 2018

Darkani

Mixed Feelings

I heard this was a time travel anime and read some very promising reviews.
But boy was I disappointed.
The dialogue in this anime is among the worst most boring I've seen. It's mostly made up of other characters name repeated over and over (I counted 5 times in a row at some point) or just repeat of what the previous character just said.
The voice actors are good though, it's WHAT they say and not HOW they say it that's lacking.
The story is quite jumpy, especially the first 3/4 of the anime. Going between intense fighting and calm everyday life. It's not a story which builds up ... slowly and steadily, rather it creates drama, which a few episodes later is reset back to where it started, much like the feeling of pointlessness you feel in fillers.
But the concept is good, time travel is not possible, but there are infinite dimensions where each dimension is one possible outcome. It takes up concepts such as Schrödinger's cat where someone can be alive and dead at the same time.
Also, these dimensions are not always aligned in time, this is what allows a kind of time travel. Though you cannot affect your past because it's in another dimension.
The music is good and dramatic, but get's a bit worn out after 24 episodes.
Likewise the battle scenes are very dramatic and greatly animated. But there is little to no meaning to the fights storywise.
The characters are quite boring and very mainstream. But a big plus is the female lead character and good mix of genders. I'm very tired of all the 90% guys-animes out there. But hey, whoever designed these characters, there is a limit to how much one person can change in 9 years... Both appearance and personality.
Watch it if you like fantasy out of this world animes. If you're looking for the time travel concept anime this may not be what you're looking for.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 25, 2021

lethargilistic

Not Recommended

Tiresome. Utterly tiresome.

In ~2008, I remember staying up until like midnight on Monday nights in order to watch this on the Sci Fi Channel's AniMonday block. Looking back on it now, I feel so...cheated out of the 30 minutes of sleep I could have gotten instead of this, though this obviously wasn't the only show playing on those nights. At the time, I had dial-up internet and I didn't know how to watch whatever anime I wanted, so I was limited to whatever got dubbed and made it onto TV. And this did. We were so deprived.

It's kind of hard to describe exactly why I ... hated this so much, because the show itself is hard to describe, but that's kind of the problem. It's hard to describe any overarching thing about it, but any individual thing isn't merely simple, but lifelessly boring. Instead of injecting any kind of humanity into those moments, it starts papering over them with incomprehensible prattle about quantum states, and only doubles down on that more and more as the show goes on. Nothing really matters. There are several versions of almost every character, and none of them is really consequential. There's a whole side plot about these two investigative characters and Haruka's father that goes almost nowhere plot-wise or thematically.

And it just goes on, and on, and on... There are many shows that deserved multiple cours. I cannot understand how or why this show, of all shows, got two.

The art style probably looks good on paper. I'd believe you if you said the concept art for this show was particularly nice. But it's so inconsistent in motion and the early digital color job flattens everything. It's so ugly most of the time.

This is one of those shows where the top reviews are so glowing because they're from shortly after the show came out and were probably written by the first wave of teenagers who used MyAnimeList. Don't believe their hype. Those people didn't have good taste yet.

Noein does not deserve a look back, even if you vaguely remember it from back in the day. The person who directed this also directed Escaflowne, and I strongly recommend checking that out instead if you somehow stumbled across Noein first.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Noein - Mou Hitori no Kimi e Episode 4 Discussion zao - Jun 24, 2008	12 replies	by AshRayKay »» Oct 7, 9:16 PM
	Poll: Noein - Mou Hitori no Kimi e Episode 3 Discussion koyaanisquatsi - Nov 26, 2009	11 replies	by AshRayKay »» Oct 7, 8:45 PM
	Poll: Noein - Mou Hitori no Kimi e Episode 11 Discussion zao - Jun 24, 2008	12 replies	by SuperJohnDoe »» Feb 6, 1:23 PM
	Poll: Noein - Mou Hitori no Kimi e Episode 7 Discussion HaiAlwaysHungry - Mar 14, 2009	9 replies	by SuperJohnDoe »» Feb 5, 12:16 PM
	Poll: Noein - Mou Hitori no Kimi e Episode 12 Discussion Drkness19 - Apr 15, 2009	10 replies	by Archean-Return »» Dec 24, 2023 3:59 AM

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