Her Blue Sky

Aoi is thirteen and wants to get out of her town to become a musician. Her sister Akane stopped her own life to raise her: thirteen years ago, about to leave for Tokyo with her boyfriend Shinnosuke, she stayed when their parents died. Now Shinnosuke is coming back to town for a concert. At the same moment Shinnosuke appears in front of Aoi as his eighteen year old self; nobody knows how he got there and he cannot leave the town. Tatsuyuki Nagai directs from a screenplay by Mari Okada. This is the team behind Anohana and The Anthem of the Heart, and the three films are grouped together. The idea is comparison. The same man at eighteen and at thirty one moves around the same town and Aoi knows them both; the narrative treats an unrealised dream not as tragedy but as arithmetic. The sister's line is the best thing in it. Akane never speaks of her sacrifice and the film does not present her as a saint; she carries the responsibility of her own choices. The music functions inside the narrative; Aoi's bass playing and the preparations for the concert move the plot. The weaknesses are that the fantastical rule is never explained and that the emotional pitch rises sharply in the last section. Who it is for: viewers who like Mari Okada's screenplays and Japanese animation built on youth drama. Who it is not for: the melodrama runs high, the template is familiar, and the fantasy element never quite fits the narrative.