=================
Patema Inverted
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:CreationDate: 2015-03-08 16:16:47
:Id: anime/review/patema
:tags: - anime
- review
:rating: 3.5
:original: https://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/patema-inverted
Patema, a young girl, explores an underground abandoned industrial
warren of tunnels. She reaches a large vertical shaft in which dust
falls *up*. When she sneaks back in her room, the Elder of the
settlement scolds her because she broke the rules: that area is
forbidden and dangerous, and being the daughter of the deceased Chief,
she should be more careful and set a better example.
Of course, her curiosity wins, she goes back to the shaft, and falls
down it… only to come out a hole in the ground, falling *up*, and be
saved by Age, a boy who's upside-down. Or maybe she's the upside-down
one?
There's plenty to like about this movie: the drawing and animations
are great, the music is beautiful and sets the mood perfectly in every
scene, the way the changing view points are shown is just brilliant.
Watching it, I was often surprised by the additional layers in the
story, and generally impressed by the attention to details.
YOSHIURA Yasuhiro (吉浦 康裕, Pale Cocoon, Time of Eve) has written an
engaging story about differing ways to look at the world, about the
dangers of isolationism, partisan reading and hiding of history, how
easily the past can be rewritten to suit the purposes of the people in
power. It's also a story of friendship and wonder, about how seeing
new worlds, or old worlds in a new light, can be mind-expanding but
also terrifying.
It's not without problems, of course: the evil people are too
theatrically so, the strict society Age lives in is an extreme
caricature of an absolutist regime, there's some uncomfortable subtext
of victims becoming oppressors, and the widespread simplistic
assumption that removing the one bad guy will magically upend
centuries of indoctrination, especially when seeing the other as not
really human is concerned.
On the other hand, it can be very good starting point for discussions
about "others" and how even extreme differences in how we perceive the
world do not necessarily imply differences to our essential nature.
All in all, a rather good, if ambitious, work, once again highlighting
Yoshiura's talent in showing us new worlds, comparing and contrasting
multiple ways of living in and looking at them.
