is a 2004 Japanese

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

film written, produced, cinematographed, directed and edited by

Makoto Shinkai , known as , is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, author, and manga artist. Shinkai began his career as a video game animator with Nihon Falcom in 1996, and gained recognition as a filmmaker with the release of the original video animation (OVA) ' ...

in his feature film debut. Set over several years in an

alternate history Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, altern ...

where the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

occupies half of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, it follows two childhood friends who grow apart after one of their friends disappears. As international tensions rise and a mysterious tower built by the Union starts replacing matter around it with matter from other universes, they cross paths once again and realize their missing friend might be the key to saving the world. Unlike his short film ''

Voices of a Distant Star is a Japanese science fiction original video animation (OVA) short film created and animated by Makoto Shinkai. It follows the lives of two close childhood friends, a boy and a girl, who get separated once the girl is sent into space to f ...

'', which was largely made by Shinkai on his own, ''The Place Promised in Our Early Days'' is a full-scale production, as reflected by its better animation quality and longer running time. It has been broadcast across Japan by the anime

satellite television Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna comm ...

network

Animax , stylized as ANIMAX, is a Japanese animation satellite television network, dedicated to broadcasting anime programming. The channel also dubbed other cartoons in Japanese language. A subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, it is headq ...

. It was licensed for North American release by

ADV Films A.D. Vision Holdings, Inc. (known simply as ADV and also referred to as ADV Films) was an American multimedia entertainment distributor headquartered in Houston, Texas, and founded in 1992 by video game fan John Ledford and anime fans Matt Gre ...

and is now licensed by

GKIDS GKIDS is an American film distributor based in New York with, according to the ''Los Angeles Times'', a focus on "sophisticated, indie" animation. GKIDS releases critically acclaimed, mostly hand-drawn, international films—such as the works o ...

. It was one of Makoto Shinkai’s films to be selected to be screened at the Japanese film festival in India as part of celebrations of 70th anniversary of establishment of India Japan diplomatic relations.

Plot

After the Separation of Japan in 1945, the northern island of

Hokkaidō is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...

(or

Ezo (also spelled Yezo or Yeso) is the Japanese term historically used to refer to the lands to the north of the Japanese island of Honshu. It included the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, which changed its name from "Ezo" to "Hokkaidō" in 18 ...

, as it is called in the anime) is occupied by the "Union" (referring to the

). In 1974, the Union begins the construction of a strange tower on Hokkaido designed by a scientist named Ekusun Tsukinoe. The anime follows the story of three friends living in

Aomori is the capital city of Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 278,964 in 136,457 households, and a population density of 340 people per square kilometer spread over the city's total area of ...

, in northern Japan: two boys, Hiroki Fujisawa and Takuya Shirakawa, both

child prodigies A child prodigy is defined in psychology research literature as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to young people who are extraor ...

; and one girl, Sayuri Sawatari. In 1996, the three are in

ninth grade Ninth grade, freshman year, or grade 9 is the ninth year of school education in some school systems. Ninth grade is often the first school year of secondary school, high school in the United States, or the last year of middle school#United States ...

, their last year of

middle school A middle school (also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school) is an educational stage which exists in some countries, providing education between primary school and secondary school. ...

, and they are fascinated by the Hokkaido Tower visible across the

Tsugaru Strait The is a strait between Honshu and Hokkaido in northern Japan connecting the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean. It was named after the western part of Aomori Prefecture. The Seikan Tunnel passes under it at its narrowest point 12.1 miles (1 ...

to the north. Sayuri becomes close friends with the two boys. The boys find a crashed

Maritime Self-Defense Force , abbreviated , also simply known as the Japanese Navy, is the maritime warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, tasked with the naval defense of Japan. The JMSDF was formed following the dissolution of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) ...

drone Drone most commonly refers to: * Drone (bee), a male bee, from an unfertilized egg * Unmanned aerial vehicle * Unmanned surface vehicle, watercraft * Unmanned underwater vehicle or underwater drone Drone, drones or The Drones may also refer to: ...

aircraft and work on rebuilding the plane with the support of Mr. Okabe, their boss at a military plant. The three teenagers promise to one day fly to Hokkaido to visit the Tower. However, before they can do this, Sayuri mysteriously disappears during the summer. Three years later, Takuya and Hiroki have stopped working on the plane, having taken different paths after the grief they suffered at Sayuri's disappearance. Takuya is working as a

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

at an

Alliance An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

scientific facility sponsored by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

, researching parallel universes alongside Ms. Maki Kasahara under the supervision of Professor Tomizawa. They know that the Hokkaido Tower, which began operating in 1996, replaces matter around it with matter from other universes, but they do not yet know why it does this for only a 2-km radius. Takuya becomes involved with the Uilta Liberation Front after he learns that Mr. Okabe is its leader; his factory workers are the other agents of the organization. Okabe signs Takuya on for an excursion to Ezo with Uilta. Sayuri is revealed to have been hospitalized over the past three years, having developed an extreme form of

narcolepsy Narcolepsy is a long-term neurological disorder that involves a decreased ability to regulate sleep–wake cycles. Symptoms often include periods of excessive daytime sleepiness and brief involuntary sleep episodes. About 70% of those affec ...

; she has been sleeping continuously for most of the three years. Her mind is trapped in an unpopulated parallel universe, where she is all alone. Tomizawa has discovered that she is somehow connected to the Union's research into parallel universes and the Hokkaido Tower's ability to change the surrounding land into alternate possibilities, but Tomizawa keeps this information, as well as her whereabouts, secret from Takuya initially. Tomizawa is secretly working with the Uilta Liberation Front and lets Mr. Okabe know about Sayuri, while Mr. Okabe reveals that the Uilta Liberation Front plans to bomb the Hokkaido Tower to incite war against the Union, hoping that this will lead to the reunification of Japan. Takuya finally learns of the most likely scenario through his coworker – that Sayuri was used by her grandfather, a Union physicist, to channel all of the Tower's unstable dimension-creating energy somewhere other than Earth, the implication of him not having done so likely having resulted in the dimension creating chain reactions around the tower to continue growing in area until it enveloped the whole world. Saddened, he goes back to the old warehouse where he and Hiroki were working on the plane, only to find Hiroki, who wants Takuya to help him complete the plane to save Sayuri. He coldly points a gun at Hiroki and has him choose between Sayuri and the World without waiting for an answer – walking away in pain. With Okabe's guidance, Takuya locks up his coworker and takes Sayuri away from the NSA compound – Takuya and Hiroki finally come back together to work on the plane. Takuya helps to finish the final programming of the plane, as they plan, using the cover of the soon coming declaration of war against Ezo, to fly to the tower and destroy it before its rays affect everything on Earth, which in turn will save Sayuri. The plane only seats two, so Takuya allows Hiroki to pilot the plane and fulfill their childhood promise. Hiroki manages to fly the plane across the strait to the Tower carrying Sayuri and a missile provided by the Uilta Liberation Front. When Sayuri finally awakens while the plane circles the Tower, the Tower activates and immediately begins to transform the surrounding area; the area under transformation grows to encompass much of Hokkaido. In the last few minutes of her coma, Sayuri realizes that when she awakes she will lose all her memories of her dreams of the past 3 years, and thus upon waking she weeps because, unknowingly, she lost the memory of her love for Hiroki. Flying back, Hiroki fires the missile, destroying the Tower and stopping the matter transformation. The film ends with Hiroki vowing to Sayuri that they will start their relationship anew.

Cast

Allusions

The film includes several references to other literary works and themes, such as separation and dreams. The poem read by Sayuri in class is from the poem collection by well-known Japanese writer

Kenji Miyazawa was a Japanese novelist and poet of children's literature from Hanamaki, Iwate, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He was also known as an agricultural science teacher, a vegetarian, cellist, devout Buddhist, and utopian social acti ...

(1896–1933). It was written on the occasion of the premature death of his sister, Toshi Miyazawa (1898–1922). Furthermore, during the summer sequence in the film, Sayuri is seen reading a novel titled by Morishita Sakae. Although the author is fictional, a book of the same name exists by a similarly named poet, Hoshio Sakae. A reference to the director's previous work is made when Takuya and Hiroki meet at the station. They see a cat which Takuya calls Chobi, the name of the cat from ''

She and Her Cat , subtitled ''Their standing points'', is a 1999 Japanese original video animation created and directed by Makoto Shinkai. Shinkai's first animation work, it is a five-minute story about the relationship between a male cat and his female owne ...

''.

Music

Theme song

*Performed by

Ai Kawashima is a Japanese pop singer-songwriter and pianist. After overcoming her tragic childhood, she released her debut single ''Asueno tobira'' (Door to Tomorrow) as the duo I Wish in 2003. She is well known for her numerous street performances. She is a ...

*Lyrics by

*Music by

Tenmon is the ninja art of understanding and using meteorology Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences (which include atmospheric chemistry and physics) with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back mi ...

*Arranged by Tenmon

Original soundtrack

Awards

* Special Distinction (Feature Film category) – Seoul Comics and Animation Festival 2005 * Jury Selection in the 9th

Japan Media Arts Festival The Japan Media Arts Festival is an annual festival held since 1997 by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs. The festival begins with an open competition and culminates with the awarding of several prizes and an exhibition. Based on judging by ...

* Silver Prize on Best Animated Film Section (by audience choice) of Public Prize – Canada Fantasia Film Festival * Award for Art in

Seiun Award The is a Japanese speculative fiction award given each year for the best science fiction works and achievements during the previous calendar year. Organized and overseen by , the awards are given at the annual Nihon SF Taikai, Japan Science Fict ...

– 44th Japanese SF Convention * Best Animated Film –

Mainichi Film Awards The are a series of annual film awards, sponsored by Mainichi Shinbun (毎日新聞), one of the largest newspaper companies in Japan, since 1946. It is the first film festival in Japan. History The origins of the contest date back to 1935, ...

2004 * Award for Expression Technique (for Trailer #1) – Tokyo International Anime Fair 2003

DVD

Regular release

*''The Place Promised in Our Early Days'' (90 Minutes) *3 Video Interviews with Japanese Cast *Original Japanese Trailer Collection

Collector's edition

Disc 1 (DVD)

*''The Place Promised in Our Early Days'' (90 Minutes) *3 Video Interviews with Japanese Cast *Original Japanese Trailer Collection

Disc 2 (DVD)

*''The Place Promised in Our Early Days'' (Animated Storyboards, 90 Minutes) *Interview with Makoto Shinkai *Animated Gallery 2002 — 2004

Disc 3 (CDROM)

*35 Still Images *Sheet Music

DVD Book

*''The Place Promised in Our Early Days'' (Storyboards, 360 pages)

Manga

''The Place Promised in Our Early Days'' was also serialized as a manga in ''

Monthly Afternoon is a Japanese monthly ''seinen'' manga anthology published by Kodansha under the ''Afternoon'' line of magazines. The first issue was released with a cover date of January 25, 1986. ''Afternoon'' has spawned many successful manga series such as ...

''. It began in February 2006 and ended in August 2006, with eight chapters. The story is by Makoto Shinkai and the art is by

Mizu Sahara is a Japanese manga artist, who also writes as . She writes in a variety of demographics, publishing yaoi manga as Sumomo Yumeka and ''seinen'' manga as Mizu Sahara She is best known in the west for ''The Day I Became a Butterfly'' and ''Same C ...

Novelisation

''The Place Promised in Our Early Days'' has been novelised by Arata Kanoh. There is an English translation by Taylor Engel.

Stage adaptation

The film was adapted into a stage play directed by Yuko Naito, with a script by

Shigeki Motoiki Shigeki (written: 茂樹, 茂喜, 茂輝, 繁樹, 重喜 or 成樹) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese baseball player *, Japanese model and actor *, Japanese footballer *, Japanese golfer *, Japa ...

and music by Masato Komata. It had seven performances from April 20–24, 2018 at Tokyo International Forum Hall C in Tokyo, and two performances on May 2, 2018 at NHK Osaka Hall in Osaka. The cast included

Yudai Tatsumi is a Japanese actor who is a member of the Johnny's Jr. unit Four-Yū. He is represented with Johnny & Associates. Biography In 1998, Tatsumi entered Johnny & Associates when he was in elementary school 6th grade. He and Yusuke Matsuzaki partici ...

, Shô Takada, Momoka Ito, Kazuyuki Matsuzawa,

Wataru Kozuki is a Japanese performing artist and a former member of the Takarazuka Revue, where she specialized in playing male characters (Otokoyaku). She joined the revue in 1989 and resigned in 2006. She is from Iruma, Saitama . She is the only Otokoya ...

Atsuko Asano is a Japanese actress.
, sponichi.co.jp; accessed September 3, 2015. Upon marrying Tsutomu Uozumi, a reputed ...

.Stage Play Adapts Makoto Shinkai's "The Place Promised in Our Early Days"
/ref>

References

External links

* * *
''The Place Promised in Our Early Days'' Review
at Anime+ Podcast {{DEFAULTSORT:Place Promised In Our Early Days, The 2004 science fiction films 2004 anime films 2005 Japanese novels ADV Films Alternate history anime Anime with original screenplays Cold War films CoMix Wave Films films Films about the National Security Agency Films directed by Makoto Shinkai Films set in 1996 Films set in 1999 Films set in Aomori Prefecture Films set in Hokkaido Films set in Tokyo Japanese alternate history films Japanese animated science fiction films Japanese aviation films Japanese romance films 2000s Japanese-language films Kodansha manga Music in fiction Seinen manga Soviet Union in fiction Works about aircraft Yen Press titles