HELLO WORLD

MOVIE

MOVIE
Dubbed
SOURCE
ORIGINAL
RELEASE
September 20, 2019
LENGTH
98 min

DESCRIPTION

In Kyoto in the year 2027, Naomi Katagaki, a male high school student encounters a person who is claiming to be Naomi from 10 years in the future. Together, they must change the future and save a classmate, Ruri, whom the younger Naomi starts to date in three months.

CAST

Ruri Ichigyou
Minami Hamabe
Naomi Katagaki
Toori Matsuzaka
Naomi Katagaki
Takumi Kitamura
Karasu
Rie Kugimiya
Tsunehisa Senko
Takehito Koyasu
Misuzu Kadenokouji
Haruka Fukuhara
Yiyi Xu
Minako Kotobuki

RELATED TO HELLO WORLD

ONA Sci-FiAnother World

MANGA ComedyHello (LoveCome) World

MANGA RomanceHELLO WORLD

Cover Art for HELLO WORLD if: Kadenokouji Misuzu wa Sekai de Saisho no Shitsuren wo Suru

NOVEL RomanceHELLO WORLD if: Kadenokouji Misuzu wa Sekai de Saisho no Shitsuren wo Suru

REVIEWS

zilla1
85/100
Watch Hello World if you can actually understand slightly brain inducing shows.
"I just wanted to see her smile again."

Well, well. What have I got to say... That was some pretty good words coming from a guy who has spent so much time trying to get her to wake up again. This Sci-Fi romance film was something I wouldn't have expected to be extraordinary, I kind of kept my hopes down for the entire film. But after watching the movie, it felt... decent? good? I was confused at that point. However, what I CAN say is that the romance was implied pretty strongly on the main character. Spending 10 years to save a girl you literally just started dating with? That's some sheer determination there my good old friend. Enough sputtering filler phrases, let me start my review on Hello World.

To begin with, the story felt... confusing? Especially at the end, it might make you go, "what just happened?" Well yeah, that was me as well. But if you got confused at any part during the movie other than the last, I suggest you go watch Steins;Gate again to turn yourself into a true mad scientist! (Not sponsored by Dr. Pepper) However, you got to catch the information quickly especially at the first when it was the most crucial about his future self explaining about ALLTALE Quantum technology. If you missed that, good luck trying to understand the whole movie. If you didn't miss that however, good for you then! You have just gotten the whole gist of the movie. Now onto the romance, as a romance-freak, I don't know I should be happy or not. But all Naomi did was just follow his future self's instruction and got her in the basement. Why can't that happen to me as well? I want my future self to get me a girlfriend too! Sadly, this is indeed a Sci-Fi movie so I cannot complain and whine about it, but still!

Now onto the art & animation, which the art felt lackluster in emotions for a Romance film. However, do keep in mind that this a full CGI film, so get ready to see some wack animation. I only noticed one however, but it downgraded the whole thing since that animation was literally one of the simplest ones that is given a lot of time, I can probably do it as well. Back to the art, although lackluster, there were a few scenes that were incredibly cute thanks to the visuals. So it depends on whether you care about the Romance or the Sci-Fi, and then you see it yourself from a specific viewpoint then on. What I have to seriously criticize on however is the amount of color they used in the movie. Oh my lord there was so much rainbow beams shining everywhere my eyes actually hurt from watching. That is one thing I want everyone to take note of : A LOT OF RAINBOW

Not to mention, the music was pretty dope. It's honestly personal preference though since we all have different tastes in music. But for me, I loved it. As for the voice actors, they've honestly done a pretty good job at... doing their job? There were some moments however that should've been implied harder than what was screened. So... director's issue? I don't understand the industry that much so I assume I have no say in something trivial like this. But still, good job.

Okay, Ruri and Naomi were so cute together it just felt amazing. (and then the story went downhill from there but let's not talk about the sad times) | Naomi in the future felt like a how a mentor should feel like, although there were some "disagreements", he has done his part well at tutoring himself in the past. Naomi in the past wasn't a wimp either, you can see the his development throughout the story through sheer willpower to save Ruri. He isn't that wimpy kid that doesn't even dare to enter the library anymore, he is a reliable and independent teen that people can rely on. As for Ruri, the only true character development she got was only when she is with Naomi. But without her, this whole story wouldn't have existed so she is still crucial for the story.

Haha, I know everyone is waiting for this. If you hated this movie, you will want me to type here : I hated this shit 0/10 no watch pls. Vice versa, if you loved this movie, you will want me to type here : I loved this movie omg 10/10 pls watch. I'll be honest here, I have mixed feelings for the movie. For me, I love sci-fi theories and I read a lot about them. So naturally I understood and enjoyed the movie. But at the same time, I love to look at things on an unbiased scale. What about the people who just came here with no knowledge of sci-fi whatsoever? Will they know what's the butterfly effect? A parallel world? A paradox? Naturally, they will get confused and not enjoy the movie as much as I did. Personally, the romance contributed a great factor for those who did not understand the sci-fi stuff IMO. As I said above, I am a romance-freak, so I savored every moment of romance the movie contained. Now for the big revelation, I will get my enjoyment an 8/10.

Overall, if you have epilepsy, I will not recommend this movie due to the amount of colors and the motion. If you do not however, I can recommend it if you like Sci-Fi or romance. Or else, if you just like anything you watch then why are you here? Go ahead. However, if you are a critic that hates CGI, romance and time traveling. Then please, do not watch this. I already warned you beforehand. Well then, signing off. El Psy Congroo
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FestivalsOfComf
65/100
HELLO WORLD is more appropriate to be seen as a popcorn flick with entertaining scenes... and that's it really.
Setting expectations:
- This review is being written under a subjective lens and mainly enjoyment.
- The amount of spoilers will be as minimal as possible to none. I don’t talk more about the plot points except in spoiler text.
- If you come to expect opinions from a very critical sense, sorry, but I’m not your guy as we may have different tastes.
- I’ll try my best to explain what are the things that worked for me and what doesn’t in this review. Then you’ll hopefully be able to understand my point of view and maybe come to your own conclusion about what this movie will be like for you.
I preface because a lot of people online come to expect reviews to fit a mold of what they want which isn’t always realistic. For me, I just like to talk about anime I enjoy. And so this review is about such things. Sorry if this ain't what you're looking for.

Verdict

HELLO WORLD is a film released in 2019 by Graphinica studios. It’s directed by Tomohiko Itou (Sword Art Online, ERASED, Silver Spoon) with a script by Mado Nozaki (Babylon, Kado).

Note - the title is in clear reference to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Hello,_World!%22_program
- If you’re the type of individual who is not too critical of the media they consume and enjoy many anime, this movie is something you’ll enjoy. This is where you stop in the review. You can now go watch the film and be able to form your own opinion. Feel free to read the rest if you’re curious.
- If you’re the type of individual who is critical of the media they consume. I think you’ll have a bad time with the movie. Those ratings from your peers are correct in the low scores. Still want to continue on? Let me set your expectations. This is a popcorn-style movie where you might as well turn your brain off. Try to group watch this while intoxicated, this film could go into the ‘so bad so good’ territory from how it executes its story.
For me, I land between both camps personally.

I would give this a film a 6.5/10 on my scale.

It’s between 6 - ‘meh’ and 7 - ‘serviceable/entertaining’. This scale will differ on yours most likely but this is how I personally felt with it. In the future, I plan to show this film when intoxicated with friends and just shitpost on it as a group really. That’s how much I value the plot in general - just a piece of entertainment.

The rest of this review will now be me discussing my point of view and why I felt like it had that score.

Background

I remember hearing about this movie via a promotional graphic on reddit before its release. It seemed quite interesting based on its poster but I put it to bed until recently watching it in June 2020. Watched this film blind before going in.

If you look at the positive reviews, they talk about the complexity of the plot as a good thing and… I’ve seen a lot of complex/contrived anime. For this film, it’s genuinely not rocket science to piece things together if you were able to pay attention to the things around. I would say Evangelion TV still takes that confusing shit trophy.

Confused when watching this film? Look for an explanation via group watch, forums, or rewatch the film to pick up what you missed.

Personally, I was able to enjoy myself while watching this but I’ve seen dumpster fires before and enjoy the flames. This is one of those films for me. A popcorn flick that is shallow in its story and themes but overall entertaining in the way it presents itself for the right and wrong reasons. Thankfully, it’s not those anime that personally offended me and I was able to have it land in the ‘so bad but yet so good’ territory.

The Review

Now the review. I’ll be talking about the anime in the following categories:

1) Story / Plot / Characters

I really found the story to be shallow. It seems like they mashed up so much other anime/films together into its script that it becomes so laughable. References to Your Name, Evangelion Rebuild, Inception, etc. It never feels original in what it tries to do. Gotta give it props for attempting to mash up a lot of interesting/ambitious concepts but that’s about it really for its credit. There were honestly a lot of interesting ideas but it never developed them further, unfortunately.

The characters are very shallow in nature and while I found the main girl designs to be cute. There wasn’t much to establish a more meaningful connection between the characters. This lack of screen time dedicated to the characters harms the story, in my opinion. Maybe the characters are meant to be self-inserts but even then, the way the story handles its character in its plot… it feels honestly amateurish at points.

It doesn’t help that the amount of time is 1 hour and 30 minutes but it feels like the plot/structure is all over and not cohesive. The pacing at points feels too lagging and it seems like they were running out of time near the end based on how they were executing certain scenes. Also the structure really needed more story fleshed out. Felt so barebones at times. This might be explained in the visuals section.

2) Visuals / Animation

Most of this movie is in 3D CGI. If you absolutely hate it, I won’t blame you. Thankfully it’s not super offensive like other CGI in anime and it’s actually done well in certain scenes especially in action. Those scenes were honestly enjoyable and I admired how creative they went with using the CGI in said scenes. Hard to say the visuals were awful, it really varied from scene to scene with some of it looking pretty and some of it looking standard. The animating wasn’t that bad but off at certain parts, I eventually got used to it all.

I speculate that they literally ran out of budget by the end. This is because...

"the idea that 3DCG is inherently cheaper is widespread – why would it be used otherwise, if it’s always worse?! What that obviously ignores is that CGI studios aren’t limited to underfunded late-night TV anime like most 2D animation companies, and thus get to charge a lot more for their work. It’s true that the situation has led to smaller and less capable studios in charge of those cheap anime tasks, which is why the best work in TV series usually comes from companies like Samurai Pictures that mainly work in other industries. However, industry members have said over and over that the cost is a case by case scenario, and if anything tends to lean towards 3DCG being more expensive."

Source: https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2016/08/01/embracing-the-3dcg-menace-ambitious-action-girls-und-panzer-the-movie/

3) Audio / Soundtrack / Voice Acting

The audio design was standard, nothing to write home about.

Soundtrack was varying in levels of quality for me. There were one or two good tracks and the rest seemed standard to me. Main offense was the jazzy tracks because I feel like it was out of place at points personally (plus it sounded sexual in nature with its bass).

Voice acting was serviceable and I wasn’t able to personally connect or empathize with many except for the adults. They all tried their best with what they were given really.

4) Overall

I wasn’t super offended by this anime and I’ll chalk that up as a win. Some media has been recently offending me with its awful storytelling and so I’m glad to have found some entertainment from this movie - even if it wasn’t intentional at certain moments.

To most people I know, I think it would be a waste of time if they took a real look at this film while watching. So I say to lower those expectations to just shitposting at the film versus take it seriously.

This movie wasn’t great but it wasn’t super awful as I expected. It was okay with some awful moments that I saw as mere comedy at that point.

And for those who genuinely enjoyed this film, don’t take my words too seriously as it’s mainly my opinion. Don’t let negativity deter your enjoyment. If anything, I envy that you were able to enjoy this film a lot because I used to have similar reactions in the past for similar levels of storytelling. Eventually, I grew to be selective with certain anime and their storytelling choices.

That ends that. Hopefully this review was informative for what this movie can bring to the table. Having a negative review amongst positive reviews should now balance things out.

The section below is me talking about spoilers because I want to talk about it. I wouldn’t recommend reading it if you haven’t seen the film before as it may hinder your enjoyment from knowing things you shouldn't ahead of time.

Warning: most of it is negative in nature.

Spoiler-talk

Shoutout to the shitty dubstep track used in that action scene.

Anyways, this film will be special in my heart for how the Future MC literally cucked his younger self. You cannot see this unironically on the big screen and that was honestly a hilarious moment for me.

He literally helped his younger self to hook up with his teen girlfriend, only to steal it away from him to be together with her soul in her older body. That was so funny.

What made it even more funnier was how the younger MC decided to steal his girl back and was successful as fuck in moving to the real world. This was literally NTR the movie and that made me laugh. That’s why I recommend for critical people to shitpost at this film because it’s so hilarious to see that story/plot unfold when you’re drunk. It’s so awful but you can’t help but enjoy it.

It’s too bad that it tried to be way too ambitious for its own good. I actually did enjoy its premise and was interested in where it was going. Having his younger self hook up because of the future self time-travelling, etc etc. Combine this with dystopian-like themes of the government always watching and drones; sets up a very interesting baseline on where to go.

Too bad we are going full Rick and morty with the simulations and the matrix/inceptions. At least the computer terms weren’t offensive with using restore, safe mode, etc. It was honestly interesting but again so shallow. I forget where I decided this shit is now popcorn-flick level. It was probably when I saw the future MC try to hook his younger self up.

That screamed otaku wish-fulfillment so much. Maybe it was the first few minutes when I was going to see a shy meek japanese boy try to go to school and all. Also, the unnecessary slow motion and speed-up scenes made no sense. It made me think I had a copy where it was edited to troll on purpose.

This production was honestly awful that every serious moment met with me laughing. It’s too bad because when the adult MC realized that Riru couldn’t accept Naomi’s feelings, that would’ve been such good fucking drama. Too bad they just jump into a huge action chase scene instead. If anything, that shit was overkill with having them try to eliminate Riru instead of letting the adult MC realize his life's work was all for naught, the love wasn’t there and he should’ve moved on. Instead they attempt to take Riru away for more dramatic effect which was honestly dumb and ruins the cool montage of the adult MC taking years to save Riru from comatose.

Thank you the Matrix: NTR version for your profound entertainment.
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Sakato
70/100
I would infer that this movie is not for viewers that wants a casual time watching this.
Disclaimer: I am by no means a usual reviewer of anime I have watched so this might not be a very critical review, and even I myself do not think that this is a good and substantial evaluation. This will contain mostly subjective statements. Any kind of reviewing format will not be followed.

It's not usual that I stumble upon many sci-fi or technological anime, let alone movies. I watched this with only a mere knowledge that "Hello World" is the title of the movie and really, that is it. Even though I have seen this popping out quite a lot on social media as a 3DCG anime before it aired, it did not really interest me. Come a few months and I found interest with this movie after falling in love with one of its soundtracks which is "Yesterday" performed by Official HIGE DANdism and eventually I decided to give it a watch.

My first impression of the world is that it is "futuristic" but not a very known futuristic sense. The setting was on 2027 which the main highlight was the ALLTALE that brought out a complex feature about geography and history of Kyoto, simulated through that technology. Apart from that, the setting is indeed in a very technological era.

What did not sit tight with me was that the MC's future self introduced himself to "himself" by telling that he came so that he would have a girlfriend. Thankfully, the circumstances that led to that point was eventually explained. For someone that is a sucker for a rather ordinary and wholesome romantic development, I was sold with it although knowing all along that it would happen.

The meat of the story. It was easy to understand the first parts of the plot, why the MC's future self came to the past, the connections of the world with ALLTALE, and the things about consciousness. The structure of what the world is in this movie has been established just adequately that the plot was supported. But I found myself with a frown on my eyebrows towards the last several minutes of the movie. For someone that is just casually watching this, things would look confusing. It felt like things coming to the end were "just" put together. It would take a lot of brain power to understand what was going on, and it would take a few to formulate a theory as to why it happened. Again, for a casual watcher, this might be a difficult movie to understand.

For example, I didn't get why they have to be on the moon in the ending. Granted, it might be ten years or so in the future where technology has innovated dramatically; it is probably just me, but I don't get the reason why the MC has to be on the moon when he was on that state.

But overall, I gave this movie a 7. It was not a bad movie at all, but I think that it was only a borderline middle-ground, if not average. I enjoyed the concepts, but I was still left confused in the end. For the animation, especially the 3DCG, it wasn't bad. There were times where it was miss, but there were also times where I thought that they were animated well. The thing that I probably liked the most on the visual is the sudden transition from 3D to 2D. I later found out that the character designer worked on some anime of Kyoto Animation. Indeed, I saw it especially with Ruri's visuals on the 2D scene on the end. I certainly missed many points in the movie but I can say it is not a wasted 90+ minutes. I look forward to watching more movies with the same theme.
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