Hello World

A Japanese animated film set in Kyoto. The year is 2027. Naomi is at school. Timid, a reader, and he talks to nobody. One day a man appears. Himself, ten years on. The man wants something from him. He has to save a girl. Her name is Ruri. She is in the same class and she talks to nobody either. In three months there will be an accident. Ruri will die. The Naomi from the future wants to change it. He says one more thing: this world is not real. There is a system in the city. Every moment of Kyoto is recorded and the recording can be played back. What Naomi is inside is that recording. From there the film proceeds like a courtship. The man tells him what to do and the boy does it. A bookshop, a festival, rain, a conversation. The two grow closer. At the same time there is a fault in the system. Reality collapses in places and the settings come apart. What the narrative is interested in is not science fiction but a record: its idea is that the man who wants to save a person is really trying to recover data, and whether that is the same thing as a person. A fact arrives at the end and the whole construction inverts. Who is real and who is a recording; the narrative changes it in the last ten minutes. The images are computer animation. The characters are three-dimensional but shaded like two-dimensional drawing. Kyoto was worked from real locations. Tomohiko Ito directed. Takumi Kitamura, Tori Matsuzaka and Minami Hamabe are in the voice cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Japanese science fiction animation and narratives built on time. Who it is not for: anyone looking for consistency; the turn in the last section changes the rules and strikes some viewers as a cheat.