Review of A Place Further Than The Universe

At this point I have accepted that most anime is just clickbait. Sora yori mo Tooi Basho brings you in with the promise of an Antarctica trip then serves you with a steaming pile of typical Slice of Life/Drama. After two brilliant episodes which gets you all riled up to watch an exhilarating show with adventure, realistic emotions and strong female characters all you do for the remaining 10 episodes is keep waiting for the aforementioned things which rarely make it into the story. The wonder and excitement of the girls though, keep the show the watchable enough to actually finish. Tooi Basho sports abrilliant premise and equally interesting characters that are nuanced and multifaceted. Finally I found an anime where teenage girls are allowed to stay teenage girls and not turned into comedic, sexual or shounen stereotypes. It also accurately portrays the various kinds of "characters" found on research teams, and how they are also normal people with desires, issues and idiosyncrasies. The best thing about the series is the abundance of female role models it provides- from the smart and determined Todou Gin to the subtle and sensitive Kanae to the roguish and hardworking Yumiko to the mature and charismatic Tamaki's mom to the relentless dreamer Takako. At the cost of sounding like a lolicon I am gonna add that Hinata, Shirase and Tamaki are also perfect! Hinata is probably my all time favourite anime girl. I just wish she could have had a different name than the superbly idiotic and useless wife of Naruto.

Where the show goes wrong is that it focuses only on the 4 girls, and by only I mean ONLY, so much so that it compromises heavily with basic logic like the girls going to Singapore and then Fremantle with zero adult supervision (remember 3 of them had never set foot on a plane or in a foreign country before), or Yuzuki's mom trusting the amateur Hinata with the camerawork rather than sending a professional photographer cum caretaker. Almost every plot point is a serendipitous deus ex machina which calls into the question the sincerity of the writers. Large chunks of the girls' approval and preparation have been cut off including getting the consent of the families, or the rigorous pre-expedition training, or how exactly Shirase amassed a million yen only through part time jobs. Does this mean that the show has glossed over mundane everyday stuff to quickly get into the adventure? Nope. Entire episodes are dedicated to boring, unnecessary subplots of Tamaki and Megu's goodbye, Hinata misplacing her passport, the crew preparing to leave and the girls getting through sea-sickness, all of which reach melodramatic conclusions. Nobody gets over sea-sickness in a single evening simply by willpower you idiots!

As the episodic nature of the narrative gets more and more prominent the story starts getting increasingly predictable and the character interactions one-dimensional. It reaches its monotonous zenith with three back-to-back episodes dealing with each of the girl's issues, all of them as animeish as it gets. These goal oriented episodes add nothing to the story or the characters. Had they spread these issues throughout the series along with a steadily progressing story it would have worked so much better. By the way, we never even get a clue regarding Hinata's family or Shirase's dad or basically anything that doesn't require at least one of the girls to be plastered smack dab at the centre of the screen. The only exception is Shirase's mom's story which, needless to say, is any shounen protagonist backstory.

Now let's get to the Antarctica bit. Not only do they take 9 episodes to reach Antarctica in a 13 episodes series they fill those 4 precious episodes with teenage melodrama rather than experiences that couldn't have happened anywhere else in the world! Talk about wasted potential. And no, a few glimpses of the Aurora Australis doesn't count. This, after all the hype of how exciting a trip to Antarctica might be with the opening song continuously teasing of the boundless adventures in Antarctica. So was it about the reaching and not exactly about Antarctica itself? Nope again. They did not care to show the preparations of the expedition organizers, or the trials faced along the way. Neither did the show involve itself with any kind of maturation of the girls that doesn't involve interpersonal attachments. Apparently interested in Astronomy research the crew is never seen to actually engage in any of it or even talk about it. The girls' interactions and bonding with the crew, which could have produced outstanding drama and deep character explorations, have only been hinted at without any real consideration. Brilliant characters done in my immature storytelling.

Episode 12 though handsomely rewards you for sitting through this tedious series. Watching the girls frantically search the base for signs of Tamako tugs at your heartstrings like no other. Finding the laptop, Shirase's hesitation, her turning the laptop on with the girls huddling together outside is top tier drama. After sitting strong through the Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 ending I didn't expect Shirase's story to affect me this much, but it did, and I LOVED EVERY LAST FRAME OF IT. Add to that the last email with the photo of the aurora as Shirase looks at the real one mumbling "I know, Mom" and you have me fighting back tears. Nothing could ruin the series anymore, not even Shirase's stupid goodbye speech or the bizarre event of Megu visiting the Arctic Circle.

Finally, Sora yori mo Tooi Basho is a series that might have had good intentions but could not live up to it. Despite the ending redeeming the show it still remains an average slice of life anime with rare moments of brilliance (by episode 8 I had started suspecting that we'll never reach Antarctica). Kudos to the creators for the unique premise and plethora of female role models. The visual style though, messes with you a bit when you know it is an international expedition and the characters look anything but Japanese; makes it hard to relate to the real world. It remains what most films and series remain: "could have been much better but isn't."