Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below – Review

Title: Children Who Chase Lose Voices from Deep Below
Japanese Title: Hoshi o Ou Kodomo (星を追う子ども)
Published by: N/A at the moment for English regions.
Based on: An original release by Makoto Shinkai and the team at CoMix Wave Inc.
Genre: Action, Adventure, Romance
Audio: Japanese Dub
Subtitles: English (At least for the premiere version)
Aspect Ratio: N/A
Runtime: 1 hour 58 minutes
Cost: $N/A
Classification: No classification has been given to this release as of the time of this review.
Special Thanks: Special thanks go to the team behind the Gold Coast Film Festival and CoMix Wave Inc. for actually hosting the Australian Premiere at a location nearby where I live.

The other night I had the pleasure of being about to attend the Australian premiere of Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below, a brand new animated feature film by Makoto Shinkai and many of the team at CoMix Wave Inc. Unfortunately I do not actually have a copy of the movie on me to refer back to, so it is hard to give it my final score until hopefully an Australian release sometime soon. However, please feel free to take this as my pending review until then. Now that everything official is out of the way, feel free to sit back and enjoy my review of Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below.

The storyline primarily focuses on the main character Asuna Watase, who is what you could consider a bit of a loner, however very mature for her age after losing her father and responsible for upkeeping of her household due to her mother being busy at work. She holds a high regard for music, owning a radio powered by a mysterious crystal that she uses to tune into the weird and wonderful songs that play through it when at her mountain hideout. On the way to her hideout one day she is attacked by a “giant freaking bear” and just as she is cornered, a mysterious man named Shun appears. In what could be concieved as the shortest romance in any series, they meet one day, kiss the next and uh…. the guy “kicks the bucket” the next day. This is essentially what the first half an hour or so was about, and it did try to introduce the main character and her living situation with moderate success… but with only the tiniest bit of action to catch your attention it was a rather slow start.

After these events she is evidently traumatized, having developed a bit of a crush on this mysterious stranger who never really explained anything, and that is when the storyline really kicks in. Focusing on elements of Japanese mythology such as “Izanagi and Izanami” (Yep, the same as in Persona 4), they introduce you to the world of Argatha where it is said to be possible to resurrect the dead, however given the abuse from “topsiders” many many years ago, had become a lost underground civilization – until now. Due to a freak accident she runs into the brother of Shun – Shin and ends up entering Agartha with her teacher Ryuji Morisaki and from there, they both look for a way to resurrect the ones they lost while traversing the plains and villages of Agartha. This is by far the more interesting part of the storyline, as well as the majority of it.

What I appreciated about the story was that it heavily focused on the elements of “life and death” as well as “Looking to the future” and “Life” itself. Each of these elements are pretty much well looked upon through the eyes of each Asuna who remains indecisive about just what she wants out of the journey, Mr Morisaki who will do anything to resurrect his wife while trying to remain a “father-figure” to Asuna and Shin who has unwavering decisions about his loyalty to his village and to the group of seemingly harmless topsiders who rescue him more than once. Fortunately they have not made use of any supernatural plot devices that would make their journey’s easier to handle, so no hidden magic to rescue them from peril and no sudden changes of heart from a minor antagonist character to let them remain unhunted.

They developed the world creatively giving the Asuna et al much to both fear and befriend. The world of Argatha is not a magical world filled with towering cities powered by magic, but instead more of a rural country with many towns in ruins with only a few remaining scattered around. Given past events the locals are hesitant about outsiders and attempt to segregate them and leave them as prey to beings who at night would swoop up and drain any topsider of their blood, who are commonly used as minor antagonists. Life and death is also a brilliantly thought of concept in this series as well as how living and dead can be reunited, however as they come in later in the film I will leave you to determine that for yourself.

Unfortunately, there were a few flaws with the storyline I would like to quickly mention. While the storyline in my opinion was great, they sometimes sped through elements and other times they just dragged on and on, so the storyline could have been thought up just a bit better to allow us a more complete look at the characters and plot elements. To be more specific on one element, they could have given Shun more screentime as while most of the plot relating to him is elaborated through Asuna’s journey, I find it hard to believe a romance could be caused by two meetings between the two. However, this was perhaps the first real adventure fantasy film of this nature by Makoto Shinkai, so I hope to see more improvements in future movies.

The one thing that Makoto Shinkai’s works are pretty much most well known for is the design, and this film does not disappoint. I have to say I am glad I saw this in the cinema as it allowed every centimetre of the scenery and character designs to be shown for just how good they were. I won’t deny when I first saw the official artwork pictured at the top of this review I was skeptical about the character designs as I felt they might have tried straying a bit too far in the attempt of being unique – however my fears were quenched after the first two minutes of the movie once I saw the brilliant level of detail on each of the characters. Some people have said both character designs and environment designs are very similar to Ghibli films, but I would only say this was the case in the most minute sense. While the character designs are great, the environment designs were even better to the point I would not call them eye candy, but perhaps eye porn or something else that could be used to describe the visuals better than candy. In terms of any anime I have seen, this would have the most memorable environment designs with everything holding that picturesque and detailed appearance to it. The series does make you aware of it, with the camera regularly panning out to make the screen 95% environment and 5% characters.

The music was well composed, featuring a number of softer tunes to suit the more serious and calmer environment while also having a few more intense songs for the few serious moments in the film. The music was composed by Tenmon, who have worked with them on other projects such as 5 Centimeters per Second and The Place Promised in Our Early Days, so I hope that they continue to provide brilliant instrumental pieces in future releases. From what I could gather, the films main theme is Hello Goodbye & Hello by Anri Kumaki and I wasn’t that big a fan of it but was appropriate for the film in my opinion. In terms of voice cast, there were only a few main voice roles needed, but they were provided by some strong talent with Hisako Kanemoto (Ika Musume – Squid Girl) voicing Asuna, Kazuhiko Inoue (Too many roles to pick out one) voicing Ryuji Morisaki and Miyu Irino (Seigen Hayami – UN-GO) voicing Shin and Shun, and all doing a great job respective of what the characters personalities and roles were.

I will be honest in saying that this was not the best work of Makoto Shinkai, however it was also a piece of work that was perhaps a bit different from his usual more modern-day works. However, him and the entire team at CoMix Wave Inc. still produced a title I would be lining up to purchase readily when it becomes available in Australia. My only regret is that there is a plausible chance of not seeing this in the cinemas again…. it really was a visual masterpiece even if there were a few elements of the plot which could have been improved upon. There is word that a North American anime company has picked up the license to the series in the US, however still no word on if it has been picked up in Australia – will it be part of the Madman Entertainment’s December announcements? I personally hope so!

I will be posting up another review once the series is released outside of Japan as I do prefer to watch movies a couple of times before doing reviews of them (The visuals are just too damn distracting), but please consider this a full one until then!

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