Review of Hello World

TLDR: Story potential: 9/10 Actual story: 7/10 Story novelty: 6/10 Art: 8/10 Sound: 6/10 (don't concentrate on this too much, I have very specific reasons and I don't rate voice acting at all) Character (emotions/motivation): 5/10 (average only cause I've seen much-much worse) Enjoyment: 8/10 Overall: 7/10Ending: 10/10 (although it's kinda expected, but still great)

If you didn't watch "The Thirteenth Floor" (1999) stop reading this and go watch it before anything else if you came to "Hello World" in hope to see some decent Sci-Fi. Then if you somehow avoided watching "The Matrix" (1999) I don't even have anything to say to you. If you did watch both of them and loved them, you'll higly likely to enjoy "Hello World" too.

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Disclaimer: I've watched and read a lot more of non-anime/non-manga (30d/60d at the time of the writing vs. months of movies and shows) and I mostly care about a good story. I also can't watch subbed anime, so my rating of sound isn't something to care about.

This is my second review and I get a feeling that all the time I'll write a review will be when someone in the internet is wrong. And now all of those saying that this show is a rip-off of matrix are wrong.

This movie mostly caught my attention by its name since it has a lot to do with my profession. I was totally misguided by it, but it isn't too bad of a thing and I totally didn't waste my time in vain watching it (well it depends on what you understand by "wasting time", but whatever).

# Story

Story is mostly based of a rather old movie "The Thirteenth Floor" (1999) but with focus shifted from existential and complex questions to romance side of thigs (not that they weren't present in the "Thirteenth Floor") with common highschool life setting. There are also some elements and ideas from "The Matrix" (1999), so actually it's a mix of those two (glory days of GITS & Parpika definitely passed, but oh well). Truth be told story is promising, but in my opinion is either too rushed (probably ~90 minutes is just too short for it) or poorly composed, it would've been best to make it in a series with 12 episodes or so. Story itself just can't be bad since it's heavily "inspired" by "The Thirteenth Floor" and it has it's own promising ideas too, but characters bring it down a lot.
Ending isn't that surprising and somehow is expected (not sure if it is the case for those who didn't watch floor though) but is really good and makes title of the movie much more suitable :)

# Art

Art kinda looks like a render from a game and is definitely memorable. It's not actually masterpiece in any way but it just has something to it that looks very interesting. After I've watched it I understood that all backgrounds and objects around them are statically drawn and/or animated by hand when characters look like computed game models drawn not by human but a CGI. Personally I don't think it's bad and it somehow appeals to that "in game" feeling which fits story really good.

# Sound

Can't say much about voice acting since I've never heard it, but as for soundtrack it's rather bad IMHO - it may be because I don't really like electronic music, but I remember fondly soundrack in Far Cry 3, so that also may mean that soundtrack is just not right. As for effects I didn't find them annoying and it is as much as I can tell from any anime/movie/show.

# Character

Boy oh, boy... It is not totally bad, but in contrast with the level of a story it may be rather annoying. Questions arising constantly in my mind were: "Why whould I care about his feelings about her when total screentime of them together is this short?", "How in hell did she actually felt anything about him/them?", "Why the fuck would he spend ten years trying to save her when their romance was at THIS level?" (I wouldn't mind if it was shown not as a romantic feeling but as a sympathy and/or pity). As I wrote earlier this questions could be mitigated just by having more screen time and full-blown anime series would just be great for that purpose.

# Summary

It's not half bad, so you should watch it if you like Sci-Fi stuff like that (as a romance it is a total failure in my opinion), as for recomendations (I'll probably make it my rule to provide them in every review) I don't really know what to recommend since actuall idea of "Hello World" is this good, but:
- Steins;Gate (not that deep on existential side of things, but heavy on timetravel and consequences)
- Re:Zero (not about simulation and getting directions from your future self, but have that "game" feeling to it while having some parts similar)

If you were interested with this movie for it's name just like me then it's not what you expect it to be and if you do know something good in that particular setting don't be shy and write me a message about it :)