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I was kind of late to the party for this movie. But what the hell, I'm giving this movie a very different point of view as an enthusiast of American movies. Now with that said, I'm not totally oblivious of director Makoto Shinkai either. I have watched his previous 3 movies and have noticed a pattern among them, and compared to that pattern, this movie right here is a very different. A different movie requires a different viewpoint, right? Alright, let's jump into the story first...

Story:
If you haven't already, go read the story synopsis then come back here. The first arc of the movie is ... a slow introduction to the leading girl - Asuna - living in a rural town. It's relaxing enough for me to start hoping that this Shinkai guy would finally make a movie with an optimistic tone for once. Well, this being a Shinkai movie, it takes no time at all to tell you the girl's lost her daddy. That scene is subtle, which is neat, which piqued my interest immediately. The movie slows down again to show her life, then suddenly... MONSTER ATTACK!!! Yeah, the movie never explained why that monster was there, which is what I'll keep in mind when giving score to the story. Anyway, the girl is rescued by a some dude that seems like he is a brother of Haku from Spirited Away (you remember Haku, right? That River Spirit dude?). He's not actually Haku's brother, of course, but he's no less supernatural than that guy. The dude - named Shun - tells our leading girl that he's from Agartha, whatever the fuck that word means. Moving on, the 2 bond a bit before the dude Shun inexplicably disappears! No wait, I take that back, the movie does explain that later. Anyway, Asuna is now saaaaad because another intimate acquaintance has left her. Yeah this is a Shinkai movie, alright.

From this point on, the movie gradually picked up its pace quite a bit. A new character is introduced, which is Asuna's new widower teacher. Yeah, he's a widower, the story will get into that plot later, but for this arc, he is the Captain Exposition for the oblivious Asuna. Basically, there is a myth involving resurrecting dead people if you travel to Agartha, which is deep, deep underground. And he is a widower, guess what he intends to do with that myth? Turns out Agartha is actually real when Shun's brother, his actual brother named Shin came to the surface to snatch the crystal he left behind. This new guy Shin also looks like Haku, btw, just sayin'.

Now from the second arc, I will let you discover the movie yourselves, as it turns into a fantasy adventure movie. But without spoiling anything, I must say I am intrigued by the mythology of this fantasy world. And I bet you will too, once you see what Agartha actually looks like, what creatures live in it, you'll wish this movie is gonna spawn a grand franchise, which regrettably will never happen. There are these deity creatures called "Quetzal Coatl" (did I write their name right?) with a fascinating back-story about how they came to be in this world. Then there is the Itzou, some kind of shadow demons that maintain the balance in Agartha, vulnerable to sunlight and water (wait, they are like... vampires???) and keep the Surface Dwellers away. But most fascinating of all, a giant flying Ark! A freaking flying Ark! That thing should catch your eyes the moment it comes on-screen, and not only that, it's gonna play an important part in the last arc, which I won't spoil here.

One thing I would like to praise Shinkai is his ability to build tension and keep it going. There are so many scenes in this movie, especially in the 2nd arc that I was on the edge of my seat worrying that this girl Asuna might not make it out alive. I mean goddamn, this is what an adventure movie should feel like, it's about putting your life on the brink of death and escaping through a hair's length. It's like watching The Adventure of Tintin, but with a vulnerable, defenseless protagonist. I mean, it feels breath-taking watching this girl and Shin escaping the Itzous by leaping across the colossal ruins in Agartha. There is another scene where Asuna is approached by those demons in their invisible forms, and it's so tense simply because it feels like an inescapable situation, almost like it was lifted straight out of a horror movie. Ah yes, horror, that's the genre you won't find much (if at all) in Western animation.

And I'm surprising myself by praising Shinkai for these merits. Before watching this movie, I was worrying that he could turn out to be a one-note hack who is good at nothing but sappy romance and he's gonna wear himself out the longer he keeps making them, like the recent Clint Eastwood movies. Well, as this movie shows, this guy has much more tricks up his sleeves to be reckoned with. I expect this guy to show more range in the future. Hell, he could tackle as many genres as Danny Boyle did and I would be still pleased (you know Danny Boyle, right? That guy that did a zombie movie, a kiddie movie, a hard scifi movie, a sappy drama movie, an inspirational survival movie and they were all good?).

The movie has to get away from the action scenes at some points to return to its slower, dramatic parts. You will soon notice a running theme through many of these drama scenes. I'm not gonna say it straight out what that theme is, but I will say that these scenes suggest their common morality in a very subtle way, unlike The Fountain (2005) - that movie pretty much hammered the message into your head. It's not heavy-handed, that's my point. The story also spends some length to flashback to Asuna's and the teacher's past. These scenes are quite touching, it may get you teared up a bit when you see how Morisaki (that's the teacher) became a widower.

Now for the ending, it's appropriately climatic, and it's climatic without a lot of action goiing, the conflict between the characters is enough to carry the climax. And the solution to the climax, I love it. Knowing Shinkai, I was actually expecting it to go in a much sadder way. Without spoling too much, I will say this is actually a much happier ending than his previous movies. I walked out all of his 3 previous movie feeling sad, and was surprised by this ending. It's not totally optimistic, I mean, come on, a widower wants his waifu back, you know where this is going. But hey, considering Shinkai's track record, this is as optimistic as his movie can get.

Quick note: There is notably less romance in this movie by Shinkai's standard, not that I'm complaining, 'cause he sure made up for that with so much more goodness.

For a good story, I like to squeeze all its flaws into one paragraph to keep the tone of the review generally positive. Yes this movie has flaws, I'm not turning a blind eye to them just because the movie is so good already. First thing is the plot holes. Notice the plural word, I counted 3 plot holes and I'll make it short. #1: the monster appearance never got explained; #2: The town guards intend to drive the Surface Dwellers away (Asuna and Morisaki) but after fighting Shin, they stopped chasing those 2, as if forgetting their objectives; #3: During night time, the river tide in this movie is low, that’s backward from how river tide actually regulates. The second flaw is the whole half-baked Arch Angel black-ops sub plot, which thankfully didn't overstay its welcome to detract too much from the movie. That's pretty much it.

This is an oddball in Shinkai's filmography, a lot of his signature elements took a back seat here, and that should be a warning to any of his fans not willing to adapt. Me? I love movie directors not because they can only do one thing right, I love them for doing MANY things right. And goddamn did this movie got so many things right that I tolerated its few flaws and even tolerated the fact that it was more optimistic than I expected (wait, is that a bad thing to begin with?). A rock solid 9/10 for the story should do the justice.

Visual:
Shinkai took a back seat for the character design of this movie and give more leeway to his character designer Takayo Nishimura. While Nishimura also worked on 5cm/s, this guy also did Konnichiwa Anne, which is obviously where he did the homework for the character design in this movie. The first Anne series - Akage no Anne - was done by 2 Ghibli veterans: Isao Takahata and Yoshifumi Kondou. There you have it - the origin of this movie’s art style. And I’m glad that Shinkai is giving Nishimura more creativity control. Why? Here is the problem I've always had with Makoto Shinkai: this guy can't design characters. If you go back and watch his previous movies, you'll notice how most of his characters look bland, uninspiring and at times, rough around the edges. I thought he just cloned his own characters across those movies to spend more work on the background and the CGI (which we'll get into later). Now with this movie, the characters do look more distinctive, or at least enough so that you don't mix up Asuna with her school friends. And they are more expressive in this movie too - one thing you can't say about Shinkai's previous movies. By Ghibli standards though, Shin and Shun look a bit generic and could easily be replaced by the prince from Tales From Earthsea and, as I've mentioned, Haku from Spirited Away. But well, in the end, this is a good improvement in the character design for a Shinkai movie.

Now for the main dish: The background. HOLY HOT DAMN is Shinkai on the top of his game for this movie. I mean, this is his talent, this is what he excels at beside sappy romance. The scenery, from the rural town to Agartha looks jaw-dropping, and consistently so. Just by looking at the meadow in Agartha, you would wish the movie would hang for a moment and ponder on that scene so you can admire it some more. This guy draws background so great and detailed that even the wood planks on the floor looks great (I'm not even kidding). And that's just the wood planks, wait until you see the night sky. Wooo *shiver*

Another thing to admire here is the lighting and shadow effects. Whenever a clavis crystal starts activating whatever magic it has, the whole screen is filled with eye-candy. Even when it doesn’t act up and only emits some dim light, it still grips your eyes looking at how the light from the crystal shine on the surrounding object. Then every now and then there are some light sources that just look so mesmerizing, like there is some flicker from the sun, or some unknown light from afar that catches your eyes so easily because this guy makes the whole screen pretty just from that. The shadow effect blends itself seamlessly into every scenes of the movie. Shinkai drew shadow not only to the characters, but to the smallest objects like the birds or down to the flower petals, so when there is high sun light and some flower petals floating around , they created some great god ray effects. And was it hand-drawn or CGI? I can’t tell, and this is why I love how this guy handles CGI: blend the CGI into the hand-drawn segments, instead of calling attention to the CGI itself.

Talking about CGI, there are several panning shots in here using a combination of hand-drawn and CGI that took me out of my seat. The most notable one must be the fight scene between Shin and the town guard. You can tell Shinkai has a great sense of cinematography just from this panning shot alone, as it pans around the 2 fighters while they are doing complex choreography, the background and the foreground constantly changing, and the 2 of them kept on fighting while the viewpoint upon them changes every second. So many animators would sweat a bucket when they see these panning shots, as they require incredibly smooth hand-drawn animation, a sharp sense of space and movement and seamless synchronization with the CGI background. Yet this guy pulled it off like those challenges were never a problem with him to begin with. So my hat off to him, and I reward this movie a perfect 10/10 for the visual.

Sound:
Let’s just get this out of the way: Yes, Tenmon’s score is freaking phenomenom, alright? There you go, this Tenmon guy is becoming Hans Zimmer or Clint Mansell or something. I guess I’ll have to keep a second eye on this guy.

I did praised Shinkai’s sharp sense of space just now, right? Well, guess what? He also applied that to his sound effects. A common trait I found in his movie is the clear distinction between sound effects from different distances. A slightest shift in distance will make a difference in the volume of the sound. This results in a great surround experience, if you can manage it, go watch this movie with a great audio system to get the most out of it. For a hand-drawn animated movie, this requires much more work than a fully CGI movie, and most anime won’t even bother with this aspect, they just play the sound effects like they all came from a flat board. So hey, many people won’t even give Shinkai credits for the sound design, so I’m doing it. What else to say about the sound effects here… oh yes, the variety! This guy did the sound effects to the smallest objects, just like he did with the background, so what you have is an array of sound effects ranging from a drop of water in the kitchen sink to helicopter’s machine gun to the moaning of the Itzou to a simple touch of a chopstick to the bowl. Once again, my hat off to the attention to detail of this movie.

Not much to say about the voice acting, they all give a fine performance here. Another perfect 10/10 to the sound department.

Conclusion:
Are you watching this, Pixar? Are you fucking watching this? This is what Makoto Shinkai was doing while you were so obsessed with making Cars 2. I mean freaking hell, Cars 2’s awfulness has caused a stagnation in Western animation in 2011, Oscar pick for Best Animated Feature seems hard this year. But I can tell, you put all of the contenders next to this movie (Rango, Winnie The Pooh and Arthur Christmas are my best guess) and they will all be pale in comparison. Of course Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo is not gonna participate in the Oscars, but then who needs their approval? Shinkai doesn’t need an Oscar to prove his worth, he earned every right to spit on that Pixar movie and be fucking proud of it. This movie, honestly, has blown out my anticipation of Brave. Even though I enjoyed it in a different way from 5cm/s, there is no reason to brush it off as if it’s a bad thing. Yeah sure, it’s not a modern masterpiece like 5cm/s but this movie is still exciting, thrilling, has plenty of heart to spend, occasionally touching, beautifully animated and fantastically scored. By the standards of a Western movie, this movie scores an excellent 9/10, and from my viewpoint, that’s exactly what I’m gonna give it, a 9/10.

Huh? Nobody has written a review for this manga yet? Err... Oh well, here we go.

Story:
I bet you can already read the synopsis, so let's skip the the chase here: Yeah, it sounds typical, alright - typical for a romantic comedy and typical for a hentai. Whatever, I was talking about the premise of the story, where it goes from there is the pleasant part. In fact, "pleasant" is the right word to use here, because while this story doesn't break any new mold, it hits so many right notes that you can't help but be won over by it.

The premise creates every chance for ... both leading characters to commit adultery, which is a cliche in hentai in and of itself. The author refused to go this way and subverted a lot of cliches in this genre. She skirted many dangerous lines, but managed to keep the alpha couple stay faithful. I know a lot of people were turned off by Virgin Na Kankei because of its cheating angle. Thankfully, it doesn't happen here. I think there are a few moments in this story where the author played up some self-aware humor. I can't be sure, maybe it's just the way she tackled those situations that evokes that feeling from a genre savvy dude like me. Hmm...

Oh, talking about the humor, I love the humor in this manga. This is not a rapid-fire comedy, but the jokes caught me off guard every time. Some of them are quite raunchy, too - not necessarily a bad thing. Other time, the jokes have the cute factor that made me smile already, pushing it a bit more and the smile turns into a laugh.

The drama is both a good a bad thing. They are tense, don't get me wrong, especially tense at the 2nd half of volume 2 and throughout the volume 3. Err... yes, you heard that right, the author keeps the tension going till the very last chapter where the leading couple is at the risk of losing their jobs (I won't spoil you the reason, though). That's the good part, the bad part is its resolution. The author took the easy way out of the drama. It feels like the author has let this drama gone out of her control and the only way to wrap it up is the convenient way. Well, I can understand the author, her strength is not drama and she doesn't want to test her limit. I bet if she were stretching this drama any longer, she would be writing a soap opera.

There are other flaws here beside that: The villain in this story - a smooth motherfucker named Saiga - got off scot-free. You would hate him by the time you read volume 3 already, and all he got for retribution is a Falcon Punch (I bet you'd yell that when you read that scene). And then there is the beta couple, they won't get the clear-cut conclusion like the alpha couple. They didn't get a lot of developments to begin with. Fortunately, this is the beta couple I'm talking about and not the alpha couple. The final flaw is it's short, that's it.

Art:
I have low expectations for female authors, but not for Harumi Chihiro. The characters look nice and have quite a range of expressions (the face of the drunk Minori is priceless!). I wouldn't say they are "wide", per say, but for this story, they are "adequate". And the erotic drawing is err... *ahem* arousing... which I guess is a good thing. Talking about erotic, there is space for some fetishism here. They are pretty safe, actually: there is bathroom fetish and kimono fetish, and that's it.

Conclusion:
I only rate mangas on those 2 merits. It's a fine read, has some good laughs, pumps you up a lil' bit and gives you something to fap to as an extra. It ends quickly, which is a shame. But for the little time you'd spend to read it, the manga is worth every minute of it.