Hello World

[Stark700]

Hello World (an original movie) announced. Director will be Tomohiko Ito and to premiere in theaters, Fall 2019.

Official site
https://hello-world-movie.com/

[Haak]

Tomohiko Ito is a bit of a hit and miss, but I've not seen him direct anything anime original so this'll be new. I don't know anything about Mado Nozaki except the fact that he wrote Kado: The Right Answer, which I've heard had a lot of interesting ideas but weren't explored well.

I wonder if the title is a reference to the Hello World! program that serves as the standard introduction for the coding community.

[Stark700]

Teaser

[iko_uwais]

One of the seiyuu is famous actor Tori Matsuzaka who had his lead acting debut as Tekaru Shiba/Shinkenred in the 2009's sentai, Shinkenger. Just found out that he already had his seiyuu debut in 2012's hack//The Movie: Sekai no Mukou ni, before Masaki Suda (2017's Fireworks) and Mahiro Takasugi (2018's Kimisui). Looks like a lot of Tokusatsu alumni are entering the seiyuu world.

[bastek66]

Everyone is copying Shinkai lately but making it whole cgi anime style is retarded idea.

[Cosmic Eagle]

https://hello-world-movie.com/sp/index.html


Plot:

Spoiler:

Kyoto 2027. The MC meets his future self from 10 years later asking him to help save the girl he'll eventually fall in love with. This current world is a virtual simulation of the outside world and the MC's future self has inserted himself into it in order to preserve the virtual copy of the girl and ensure her memory lives on for posterity.........or so he says.

Spoiler:

Just watched it. Pretty nice overall. Apparently the original script according to the writers was grittier but they toned it down and made it more like Kimi no Na Wa or general audiences might become alienated. Felt more like a light version of Baldr Sky in Kyoto to me though rather than Kimi no Na Wa. The illusory/virtual worlds made it slightly confusing near the end especially with the pace but it's nothing too brain-twisting. If they drew the show out longer it would have enhanced the emotional impact though, IMO. The ending was....well I liked it, but I can already see some people saying they should just have OG MC and Ruri die in the non-virtual world for impact. Nevertheless I still find the closure ok enough.

[Magin]

I was wondering when someone was going to make a thread for this- currently living in Japan, I'm beginning to realize that things don't appear on this site usually until they're big in the West (there's a certain PS4 gam tha;s been out for almost a month and no thread on it exists either). Especially since I'd been seeing a ton of commercials for it.

And much like so many movies like One Piece Stampede, Tenki no Ko, etc., as interesting as this looks... I'm out in a rural area, so no English subtitles (I don't even know if english subs would be available in the big city theaters), and I'm not going to fork over cash when I won't be able to understand 90% of the movie. Sailing the high seas it is, unfortunately)

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by Magin

I was wondering when someone was going to make a thread for this- currently living in Japan, I'm beginning to realize that things don't appear on this site usually until they're big in the West (there's a certain PS4 gam tha;s been out for almost a month and no thread on it exists either). Especially since I'd been seeing a ton of commercials for it.

I don't think Hello World is big anywhere outside JP let alone the West TBH....Where else besides JP and some SEA countries is it being aired? Even 空の青さを知る人よ is more famous internationally and that one just came out 2 weeks ago. Meanwhile most people on this board don't seem to be into JP games much unfortunately


Eng subs rarely exist, if ever, in JP cinemas but don't they usually have JP script subs for deaf people too? Would be easier than just going purely by ear

[kuroyanagi]

I finally got reminded that I wanted to see this once upon a time, and I did.

And you know what, this movie was really good! The comparisons to Shinkai movies are inevitable, both those works and Hello World have this urban adolescent SF-ish colorful big feels blockbuster vibes, but just writing it off as a Your Name ripoff is a bit unfair. It riffs on many other things, like classic SF, but still manages to have soul. The script is quite tight and satisfying in the way the in-world science is internally consistent and the twists and foreshadowing make sense. You'll like this if you liked Steins;Gate and Inception and such.

I think the pre-release impressions of "Horiguchi Yukiko designs ruined by hideous CG" made this movie a huge disservice. I would rate the ratio of CG to hand-drawn cuts at about 7:3, and then it's rather clear that most of the character animation was heavily touched up. There are scenes where the motions are kind of stiff but that's basically it, Hello World looks better than many fully hand-drawn movies out there.

There are about two bad things that I could say, and one was the voice acting - the three mains are voiced by actors/actresses and not professional seiyuu and it shows. Adult Naomi does basically the best job of the tree, but young Naomi is incredibly wooden and lacking emotion, while Ruri's voice sounds too old for a teen and gets oddly hoarse in some lines. The script tries to cater to this by having all three main characters be generally soft-spoken people, but I feel many scenes' comedic and emotional potential was greatly hurt by young Naomi's to inability to sound anything but disinterested. It's all the more of a shame because the supporting cast has the likes of Koyasu, Kotobuki Minako and Kugimiya Rie who just shine through their very limited screentime.

The other thing is kind of spoilery:

Spoiler for Ending spoiler:

In the big picture, Ruri as a character is a total MacGuffin. She's got zero agency and basically exists to act as a catalyst to events, while the movie's emotional core is between the two Naomis. She's cute but that's it. ...The twist ending basicaly undoes this complaint, I guess? But it still bugged me slightly.

Anyway, the ending to this movie is something I'll definitely remember for long; one of the better rushes of adrenaline I've felt in a while.

EDIT: I feel the need to talk more about the twist, since it's one of the things that elevated a good story to one that's really great.

Spoiler for Spoiler:

99% of the time, I hate the "it was all a dream/simulation!" move - it tends to cheapen all the emotional impact of what the characters went through. Here, it's a rare case where the twist actually changes the ending from a beatufiul but bittersweet one to one that is more complete, and gives elevated meaning to everything that came before. It's the perfect convenient happy ending, except it makes total sense and validates that each depth of the simulation is equally real and agent in a cool application of quantum physics.