Review of Hello World

The basic idea for this film had great potential to be an elite-level film, unfortunately this is not what Hello World is. This is not to say it’s bad: Hello World is sort of a hodge-podge of a film that wound up being rather successful despite also being entirely too ambitious. In the first five minutes, it becomes clear there is quite a bit more to this film then the synopsis would lead you to believe. The actual basic sci-fi elements are strongly reminiscent of The Matrix. The constant escalation of the action sequences involving those powers is reminiscent of classics like Akira. The ideaof trying to bring a dead loved one back is at this point a trope in anime, but in a sci-fi setting (and in large part thanks to the ending) is most similar to Hal. As if that wasn’t enough, it tries to also be a slice-of-life high-school romcom with bildungsroman elements at times to boot. Although it is not as successful as any of those films artistically, it tries to do so many well-worn plots at once it somehow comes off as fresh and interesting. If I described “Matrix but a high school slife-of-life romance with action-packed battle sequences,” it wouldn’t sound appealing at all, but Hello World somehow pulls it off.

The plot is rather engrossing overall, but there were definitely times where the hodge-podge nature felt disjointed and overly convoluted. This was particularly true during some of the unimaginative moves during the climatic battle sequences that were startlingly juxtaposed with cliché romance jokes, almost like Evangelion but without a sense of irony. Further, some of the sci-fi elements felt a bit far-fetched and made up on the spot. However, at the end of the day I couldn’t help but enjoy trying to figure out the mysteries of the story as it unfolded, and the final twist left me way more satisfied in the end than I was throughout most of the film. With about twenty seconds left, my thoughts were, “That’s it? That felt like a confused mess?” But the last twenty seconds more than made up for it, tying together some of the most far-fetched sci-fi elements with lines of dialogue at the beginning about the protagonist’s desire to be a more assertive person in a nice, tight bow.
Speaking of the protagaonists, the characters are where this movie becomes a bit more cliché. Naomi is a rather stereotypical lead for both a romance and sci-fi anime: kind of a nerdy virgin who is socially awkward, especially with the opposite sex. It’s nothing special, but I guess characters like that are tropes for a reason because it sort of works. His older self is a bit more interesting given his sense of passion for Ruri. Ruri herself starts out with a strong personality, but she kind of fizzles out into just another forgettable stand in for a love interest towards the end. Most of the other side characters aren’t very important, but the more colorful personalities are hinted at well enough in subtle ways, like the eccentric professor at Keito university.

However, the area where this film fell most flat was in the animation and directing. Most of the fights felt very disjointed and awkwardly directed, with some rather obnoxiously low flame rates juxtaposed with overly fluid character movements creating an uncanny valley effect. Overall, the animation was riddled with corny-looking CG that was implemented rather poorly. The film had its moments of artistic competence, a lot of the background sets of Kyoto’s cityscape and streets were realistic and evocative (ironically enough, I saw an ad for this in Kyoto tower last month, which is especially funny given the climactic scene of the movie), and the more slice-of-life montages created a sense of character and relationship development very subtly with meaningful repeated transition motifs that were well animated. There was probably one or two music sequences too many, but they were well-directed enough to create a sense of nostalgia for the film. But, overall, the artistic direction felt even more like an incoherent hodge-podge than the plot, but unlike the plot was not tied together with a nice denouement. As a result, it felt more like a TV series with different episodes directed by different studios than a polished feature film in terms of animation.

Overall, Hello World is nothing overly special like I was hoping for given the high-quality looking adverts and glowing reviews. It’s a perfectly fine film that dabbles in clichés, but spins them together enough to be interesting and with enough unpredictable twists to pique the interests of sci-fi, romance, and action fans alike. Further, the intriguing ending makes it worth the watch alone. If the art direction were a bit more refined and the characters a bit more original, this would’ve been a significantly better film.

Plot: 8/10
Character: 5/10
Art: 5/10
Sound: 6/10
Enjoyment: 7/10
Overall: 6/10