SORA NO AOSA WO SHIRU HITO YO

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA DramaSora no Aosa wo Shiru Hito yo
NOVEL DramaSora no Aosa wo Shiru Hito yo: Alternative Melodies

REVIEWS

• 

  Prismee

  90/100
  A delicate tale of relationships that flourishes because of its sincere characters.

  I went into Soraao expecting something like an Ano Hana 2.0 with the whole adolescent melodrama with ghost/spirits vibe that its trailers and synopsis portrayed the movie out to be. I wasn't too huge of a fan of Ano Hana, and so I was very, very pleased to see that Soraao was not Ano Hana 2.0. Soraao was a movie that, amidst the clearly fictional elements of the plot, told things as they are, and as they should be. It was a complete film that knew its goals and direction, and never lost sight of that the whole way through.

  The most pleasant surprise of the movie for me was its direct and clear communication and understanding between characters. We have Shinnosuke and Akane in their early thirties, Aoi and Shinno in their late teens, and Tsugu in primary school. With such a wide age gap, I expected that, somewhere along the line, the age gaps would come into play to create miscommunication, or the general "you wouldn't understand" vibe would come into play as a way to create some sort of tension or conflict that needs to resolved. Yet throughout the movie, the characters were very clear with their feelings and their position. When the boat was rocked, Tsugu firmly lets Shinno know his personal feelings for Aoi. When Aoi points out that Michinko has feelings for Akane, Akane gently explains that even with that knowledge, there are things that are understood but must not be said. When Aoi confesses her feelings for Shinno, she clearly (though, with passion) exclaims what Shinno shouldn't do in the moment. The characters understand each other, and themselves, and because this understanding is a very clear given in this movie, the Soraao team was able to explore some deeper and realer aspects of relationships, which was the real meat of the movie.

  My favorite aspect of Soraao was its masterful use of unspoken dialogue and parallel plots to drive the movie. We are never explicitly told why Shinno existed as a physical spirit in the first place, but we are able to figure that out ourselves by following Akane's decision between making kombu and mayo/tuna onigiri throughout the story. A seemingly light plot point that did not hold much weight in the beginning ended up allowing the viewers to understand (in addition to the main plot) that Akane had decided to give up on her future in Tokyo with Shinno because she loved her sister more. The moment Akane exclaims that perhaps she will make mayo/tuna onigiri next time, Shinno disappears and we the viewer understand that his existence was a consequence of Akane's decision to support her sister over pursuing the life she wanted with Shinno following their parents' death. These sorts of stories underneath the stories allow for the thoughts of the Soraao team to hit hard like a one-two punch. It's like Okada Mari and Tatsuyuki Nagai took a good look at what worked in their previous films and threw that in to Soraao. And when the Soraao team couples these sorts of working aspects with a soundtrack that dynamically adapts to match the tension and mood of scene, it's a total K.O. for me.

  All in all, I think Soraao was a very pleasant movie saturated with delicate thoughts and interactions. Its characters knew who they were and who others are, and their no-nonsense approach to communication allowed for the genuine expressions of love and understanding to take hold of my own heart (onions may have been cut during the film). This one is third movie I recently watched with Okada Mari listed as key staff member of the production, and all three of them had that delicate touch of complexity that I am really fond of. I'd like to believe that is due in part to her involvement, and so I will be on the lookout for other anime and movies that she may be a part of in the future. If I really had to put my totally unnecessary critic glasses on, I guess something that didn't really work for me at times was a few awkward transitions here and there (not too huge of a fan of fade-to-black transitions), and we never really got a good chance to understand why Shinnosuke ended up the way that he did. The movie was a bit cookie cutter at times when it came to plot progression as well, but those are all really, really minor and unnecessary points of distaste though. I really enjoyed Soraao, so taking into consideration how I have rated other movies in the past that have impacted me positively, I give this movie a 90/100.

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• 

  Juliko25

  75/100
  A nice little youth coming-of-age movie, but could have benefited from having less characters and useless subplots.

  In spring of 2011, an anime called AnoHana aired on Japan's Noitamina block. After a relatively lackluster winter season that didn't bring in much money, AnoHana came out of nowhere and managed to achieve immense success and popularity. Because of AnoHana's unexpected success, some of the people who worked on it: Director Tatsuyuki Nagai, writer Mari Okada, and character designer Masayoshi Tanaka, went on to become their own group, called Super Peace Busters (after the group name the kids in AnoHana referred to themselves as) and began working on other projects similar to AnoHana. In 2015, they released the movie Anthem of the Heart, a movie I've seen and really liked, but have yet to review. After that, they put out a new movie, called Her Blue Sky, or its Japanese title, Sora no Aosa o Shiru Hito yo (translated as Those Who Know The Blueness of the Sky). All three anime take place in Mari Okada's hometown, the mountain locked city of Chichibu in Saitama Prefecture. Speaking of Mari Okada, she's made quite a name for herself over the course of the new tens, though she's admittedly rather divisive in the anime fandom. I didn't really pay much attention to her myself until Anime News Network highlighted the fact that she published an autobiography, which you can find on Amazon easily. I bought it, read it, and really liked it because I enjoyed reading about her journey and the insight into how screenwriting for anime works, though some details of Okada's early life were not only unsettling, but downright horrifying. Barring that, how does Her Blue Sky fare? Personally, I liked it well enough, but it still leaves a lot to be desired, and that's probably due to its format.

  The story focuses on a young high school girl, Aoi Aioi, who dreams of becoming a musician just like one of her older sister's friends, a red-haired guy named Shinnosuke Kanamuro. Unfortunately, her parents died in an accident, and her older sister Akane had to put her dreams on hold to take care of her, rejecting Shinnosuke's offer to go with him to Tokyo. Shinnosuke left, and years later, Aoi finds herself lost. She feels like Akane is wasting her life being stuck in a backwater town taking care of her, and would be better off if she left and did her own thing. One day, when Aoi is practicing her bass skills, she finds Shinnosuke at the shack where she practices, not having aged a day. Aoi can only assume he's a ghost and that Shinnosuke died. But making things complicated is that her town is holding a festival where a famous enka musician, Dankichi Nitobe, is set to perform...and Shinnosuke suddenly returns, confirmed to be alive, only now a washed up, brooding, deadbeat musician who's nothing like how he was back when Aoi was a kid. Whatever made a younger version of Shinno appear, Aoi and the son of one of Shinno's other former bandmates need to find out what's going on and what they can do to help both the past and present Shinno.

  If you're an adult who has ever wondered, "What would my younger self think if they saw me now?" then this is the film for you. It's fairly similar to AnoHana in its premise, but unlike the former, where a character actually died and came back as a ghost, the characters here encounter what appears to be the spirit of their friend Shinnosuke back when he was young, only Shinno isn't dead. The movie explores themes of adulthood and balancing idealism from simpler times with grounded, real-life commitments that come from growing up, with Spirit Shinnosuke representing the former, representing the time in his life where he and his bandmates could dream of going to Tokyo without thinking of the complications that it entails. From a thematical standpoint, I think Her Blue Sky handles its core themes pretty well for the most part. It helps that while Okada's works typically tend feature teenagers as the protagonists, she goes out of her comfort zone here by having the film focus quite a bit on various adult characters, such as Aoi's older sister Akane. They don't wear their emotions on their sleeves as much as kids do, but some of them are still in touch with their younger selves in this way. One of Akane's old bandmates, a man named Michinko, was the plucky drummer of their group, and even after he marries, has a kid, gets a divorce, and gets a job in City Hall, he continues to be cheerful and friendly, helping his friends out when needed, even if he can be kind of a goof.

  Unlike AnoHana and one of Okada's other movies, Anthem of the Heart, the company that did the animation for those, A-1 Pictures, did not work on Her Blue Sky. Instead, CloverWorks got that job, and I admit I'm rather mixed on it. On one hand, the character animation is absolutely sublime. Characters move and act out their emotions with their bodies, with the movement being as smooth as butter, with no still frames, no recycled scenes, and very detailed background art. On the other hand, said background art is also kind of static. One reason people love the animation for Makoto Shinkai's movies is that he puts care and effort into every scene, making everything come alive. The character animation achieves this, but the backgrounds don't, and often times, the moving characters doesn't seem to blend with the background because of this. Being a movie about music, Her Blue Sky also boasts a good soundtrack. The songs are well sung and composed, and some are used as important plot points in the movie, but never get shilled over and over again, so hearing them doesn't get old, making their emotional impact hit more successfully (Sorry, Ride Your Wave. I love you, but overusing one song for an entire movie was not the best idea). I also find it interesting that Aoi is a bassist rather than a regular guitarist. Most music-themed anime tend to favor singers or guitar players, so it's refreshing to see an anime put a rather underappreciated instrument in the limelight, letting it take center stage for once.

  Speaking of center stage, the characters! I admit...I'm kind of mixed on this one. Some are really bad, some are really good, and the rest fall somewhere in between. Being a movie, Her Blue Sky obviously can't devote all its time to fleshing out its entire ensemble, and that's one of the things that holds it back. The main cast are reasonably well developed. Aoi is a brooding teenager who knows what she wants, feels like she's weighing her sister down, and does want her to be happy under her closed off facade. Young Shinno is optimistic, kind, caring, if a bit of a goofball, while his older self is morose, quick to anger, and weighed down by how his life turned out. Another major character is Tsugu, Michinko's young son who hangs out with Aoi and gets roped into the spirit Shinno business with her. He also gets a healthy amount of development, even though a lot of what goes on has nothing to do with him, as he does want to help Aoi and Shinno out in spite of his snarky, deadpan facade. The best of them is Akane, Aoi's sister. After losing their parents, Akane stepped up to take care of Aoi just before graduating high school, which is the reason why she didn't go to Tokyo with Shinnosuke years ago. She continues to put Aoi first even after Shinnosuke returns to her life. Well-meaning townspeople push onto Akane the idea that she couldn't possibly be happy stuck in a backwater town taking care of her sister, something Aoi herself believes, which does put a lot of pressure on her, but Akane brushes it all away with cheerful stoicism and is perfectly content with how her life turned out in the grand scheme of things. There's a good amount of emphasis put on familial relationships here, and while there are romances here, they thankfully don't take over the movie. In that aspect, Akane is unique, refreshing, and wonderfully three-dimensional.

  That said, other characters don't fare as well, because they either don't add anything to the story, take away from the more interesting characters, or just don't get the fleshing out they deserve. The worst of these is one of Aoi's classmates, Chika Otaki. She's little more than an annoying, shallow, superficial girl who inserts herself into Aoi's business just to try and get with Shinnosuke (Not in a sexual way, of course!), caused arbitrary drama between him and Aoi, jumps to conclusions about everything, and was just overall pointless to the whole narrative. You could cut her out entirely and nothing would be lost, and I have to question why she's in this movie at all, as she literally contributes nothing to it and doesn't get called out for her actions. Speaking of not getting called out for their actions, present day Shinnosuke is a real dick towards Aoi when she and Michinko get recruited to practice with him and Nitobe. At one point he's needlessly rude to Aoi, a high school student, belittling her and her bass skills for no reason. I mean, if you want to critique a musician's skills, sure, but there are nicer, more polite ways to do it, and he never even apologized to her after that.

  Now for the movie's biggest problem: Its overall structure really doesn't work in a movie format. It crams in too many subplots, resulting in several of them being introduced out of the blue and then being forgotten in the very next scene. For example, one character tells Shinno that he has a crush on Aoi, but there was nothing in the movie that indicated as such beforehand, so the reveal just seems shallow and shoved in, and nobody talks about it afterward, with the narrative treating it as a Big Lipped Alligator Moment. The stuff involving Chika also added nothing to the narrative. I have to wonder if Her Blue Sky would be better off as a TV series than a movie, similarly to Maquia. Who knows?

  Overall, while it's not the best movie I've ever seen, Her Blue Sky is unique among movies that already covered the same familiar ground, and a nice little youth coming-of-age story for those who like that sort of thing.

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• 

  Benkei

  82/100
  Spoiler-free review of Her Blue Sky. Amazing adolescent drama with grown-up characters.

  ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ Considerations ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ ● __This is a spoiler-free review__. ● 80+ in my rating means really good. ● I've added one of the anime soundtracks to the soundtrack section. If you wish, scroll down, start it, and use it as your background music while you read. ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The Story ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ Akane loves her boyfriend Shinno; she stays at his band practices and watches while he aims to become a famous guitarist. Akane's baby sister, Aoi, also enjoys spending time with them and hearing the band music, but due to tragic events, Akane and Shinno had to split up, and now, 13 years later, they get the chance to meet up once again, but Shinno is a totally different person. The story of Her Blue Sky is pretty good. The way that is portrait a teenager love story with grow up adults is pretty well done. I feel like romantic stories with teenagers are often very intense, with feelings bursting out and a general positivity and excitement that is characteristic of adolescence, but Her Blue Sky has a more grounded sense because the characters are grown up. Things aren't as pretty and "lovey dovey" all the time. The pacing is very well done, and as the story progresses, you can really feel the development and conflicts between characters. The only thing that wasn't quite to my taste was the ending, which felt a bit rushed. It used the "credit scene tells the rest" as a resource to explain what happened after the ending, which is common in a lot of movies, but I wanted to actually see it animated. ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The Art ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The animation is really good. Actions are very fluid, the 3D is very well made, and it really fits the scenes. Backgrounds are absolutely amazing, and that mixes with the story since there's a meaning to showing how beautiful the countryside can be. Character design was pretty well done. Every character is different from each other, making it easy to spot who's who. The design, especially the hairs, reminded me of Kyoto Animation works such as K-ON! That might be my personal interpretation, but they looked pretty good. ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The Characters ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ There are an average number of characters in this work: Akane, Aoi, Shinno, their band, and a few other supporting characters. They're well done for the purpose of the movie; the character core is well done as the movie has a good coming-of-age characteristic, showing a lot of their past. I feel like a few characters could've been better developed, and in a sense, especially due to the ending, I would like to dream about a sequel. As I always like to talk about the main character, Aoi was pretty good. Her impulsive personality really got the movie going. She sets the pace of the film; when she slows down and allows all thoughts to gather, the film takes on a more dramatic tone. Pretty good quality for an main character. ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The Soundtrack ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The soundtrack is good. Most of the songs are based on a good mix of percussion instruments like xylophone (or marimba) and bass, guitar, or piano. They mix with the scenes very well, when the drama needs to kick in, you can hear the piano tones in the background blending in the mood, creating the perfect atmosphere.

  ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ Conclusion ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ If you're like me, you skip everything and read only the conclusion because you don't want to get spoiled with other themes. So I will try to be brief on this point: __Watch it__. The movie isn't long (below 2 hours), but within that time you can experience a very interesting romantic story combined with a very solid overall production. Besides the ending feeling a bit rushed for my personal taste, there's nothing negative for me to say about it.
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