SAKASAMA NO PATEMA

DESCRIPTION

CAST

SPECIAL Sci-FiSakasama no Patema: Beginning of the Day
MANGA AdventureSakasama no Patema: Another Side

REVIEWS

• 

  DeathCounterX

  75/100
  A Multi Layered World With Paper-thin Characters

  Patema Inverted is an interesting film to say the least. It had its ups and its downs, twists and turns, though overall it was a good film. Mind-bending at times but that's what made it so great. I don’t do scoring for categories like stories, characters, and stuff but instead I just say what I enjoyed and what I didn’t.

  Spoilers throughout so if you haven’t seen the film I recommend watching it first or just scroll all the way down for a TL;DR with no spoilers.

  Patema Inverted is a film about a young girl named Patema who one day travels to what is called the “danger zone” and drops her backpack getting caught on a fence. A boy named Eiji sees this backpack but something isn’t right. As Patema goes to grab her backpack we see that she in fact has her gravity inverted from Eiji.

  I love this premise and the world building of Patema Inverted helps to heighten that. Immediately we see how different the world Patema has lived in and the surface world of Aiga is. When Patema goes to grab her backpack she slips having to rely on Eiji to help her. When they grab onto each other we see that Eiji is actually able to get airtime because Patema is counterbalancing his weight with her own gravity. Eiji, an Aigan, is taught in school that people like Patema, the Inverted people, are sinners who will be eaten by the sky. Because of this Patema thinks that Eiji is going to do harmful things to her since he’s inverted in her perspective. I just love this idea of literal opposite perspectives as the conflict of the film, it's much different from the stereotypical villain or natural disaster occuring as a conflict and it's a breath of fresh air to say the least.

  I also loved the camera work for a lack of better words. The way the animators created certain scenes were amazing. One scene in particular I absolutely loved. After Patema and Eiji grab onto each other, our perspective rotates to see the bright sun in the background with Patema and Eiji inverted from each other. This and other rotating scenes in the film made it so confusing yet spectacular to watch at the same time. When we are on the surface world in our perspective Eiji is normal and is walking on the floor while Patema is walking on the ceiling, but when we go down to where the Inverted live the camera is flipped so that the Inverted seem normal and instead Eiji is the one walking on the ceiling. These touches to the film to make us see the world in the way that Eiji and Patema do are what I absolutely adore.

  

  Now as good as the world building and the animation is, there's something the film doesn’t build, the characters. The film shows a few scenes of backstory about our MCs throughout the movie but nothing too in-depth. The film mentions someone named Lagos who is apparently an important person to Patema. For the majority of the film we barely know anything about him besides his name and he has traveled to the surface world. The film also mentions Eiji’s dad tried to fly into the sky with what looks to be a mechanical air balloon but then was shot and fell out of it. In addition to these two supporting characters which basically provide us with nothing, the film doesn’t give us much information about Patema or Eiji so it is so hard to get attached to them. We don’t even get the main antagonists name throughout the whole movie.

  TL;DR :
  The idea, conflict, and animation of the film is great, however I found the characters extremely hollow and not flushed out whatsoever. Overall a good experience and a film I recommend watching if you want your mind boggled.

  Continue on AniList
• 

  R2R

  74/100
  "Falling into the sky".

  https://anilist.co/anime/12477/Patema-Inverted/

  ---

  Imagine walking on the ceiling of your room or any other closed environment & think about all the subtle changes that you might notice. You feel a bit dizzy now that gravity might work a bit differently, your pen might not work properly, you would have a hard time figuring out at all the upside down faces & objects, and you would probably feel way more awkward if you try to hug someone. By a small change in your perspective, your entire world looks and feels vastly different, which is fascinating. What's even more fascinating but equally terrifying, is when you think about "Falling" from this perspective. Where do you really fall? If you take a small peak outside of a door or a window under you, an endless sky will be waiting to make you disappear in a single second.
  It's different, confusing, insanely frightening but most of all, it's really fascinating.

  What "Patema Inverted" does is it takes this fascinating concept and breathes life to it. 15 minutes in and it gives you, what I recall as one of the grandiose shots in all Anime; showing a girl and a guy, falling into the sky. And from then on, you get pulled into its world and it'll amaze you through the end.
  The movie shines during its moments where it fills the screen showing its enormous world from different locations, especially moments involving the sky might even take your breath away. It's that good.

  While I really like this movie for its beautiful world, there are 2 main reasons why I think the movie couldn't become a truly unique Anime.

  1. Boring religious views in a Sci-fi setting: What bothers me the most is how it refuses to elaborate on its dictatorship government. The movie says that "Scientific Experiment failure caused Gravity Inversion", but it makes very little sense when the main villain always barks his hate towards inverted people saying that 'God banished those cursed people into the sky' with his boring religious views and somehow took over a scientifically advanced city. This is neither to say I oppose religion (I'm a Hindhu btw) nor I oppose the idea that sci-fi & religion shouldn't exist together in stories. There are many Anime & Manga (Madoka & Lustrous, for instance) where the sci-fi & religion elements go hand-in-hand to explain the world & progress the characters but it works because it isn't bland or half assed, unlike here where it deviates very much & leaves a lot of questions.

  2. Unimpressive Characters: The characters have personalities largely coming from the design & traits, but for such a grand concept, characters being just passable is kind of a shame. The story uses its tricks though, there is a Your Name-ish romance, a sleeping rebel beside the Hitler-inspired-but-bland villain and some unexplained flashback (which is the only point that really worked), but are very tied to cliches & are very predictable. Not saying all these are bad, some beautiful shot compositions and grand orchestral background music make it look beautiful but it's all just a trick, a very noticeable & poor trick.

  Now one last thing, I would like to mention is the ending. While a bit predictable, what really sold the scene is once again, the world;
  That Moon with Saturn-like rings is lovely surprise.
  and also the beautiful ending song.

  At first, I thought it was just some non-Japanese foreign song but I was a bit surprised when I found out that the song was written in, "Esperanto", a language invented to bridge different people from different places and marvelled how well it worked with the theme of the movie.

  ---

  #TL;DR You probably won't like this movie if you only come in for the characters but its unique setting among Anime, sparkled with some really beautiful moments, is worth enough to give a try.
  Continue on AniList

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