Anime: On Your Mark

After watching over thousand different anime-s i have watched "On Your Mark" and i could not stop listening to it.
In those few minutes that it lasts it will leave a feeling as if you knew this clip from some anime that has over 500 episodes. The music and the amazing animation that follows will leave an impact, even more if you are a Ghibli fan and nevertheless if you are an all anime fan.
The plot is situated in future but with Hayazaki-s animation it makes it a bit more "vintage" i would say and somehow it will leave you with a feeling that anything can be awesome.

Highly recommended to anyone.

Best regards

Aza

There's a marked difference between something that is designed around and flows with music like Comedy, and something that is jerked around by it the way On Your Mark is. The incoherence in On Your Mark's chronology and reality feels less like an artistic choice that has a meaningful effect on the final product and more like a story that had to be chopped and tinkered with in order to fit the music. The climactic scene where the two heroes drive down a country road and guide the Angel on her first flight in a long while, if not ever, is certainly a beautiful and memorable scene, but for no reason other than to catch the first chorus, it's actually put out of chronological order and thrown in early on.

Certainly, the first chorus begs for something dramatic, but a tiny bit of creativity, for instance, creating and showing a different warm scene between the 3 characters, would have kept the integrity of the finale. As it stands, the second time that very same scene is shown is the more important of the two, but its effect is dampened because it is the second showing of the very same thing.

On Your Mark tries to tell such a complex story while squirming through musical obstacles that it feels like an AMV someone cut from a much larger story. Where most films of this length would simply focus on one aspect of the characters and tell a very basic story, On Your Mark tries to compress a whole drama in all its emotional complexity, without dialogue, constrained by musical cues, into 7 minutes. The characters just end up feeling empty.

It's perfectly fine as a music video, since most of them are incoherent, and if they're sappy, they usually take that to excess. It's just disappointing because the story could have amounted to something more cohesive and satisfying with small reworkings. Instead of telling the whole boys meet girl story, scrap or very briefly touch upon the meeting, and focus completely on the actual relationship. There is just too much stuff going on. Approaching it simply as a music video though, it contains a gorgeous and emotionally affecting scene the likes of which has never been seen accompanying a pop song. Disappointing as it is, On Your Mark is still something I can reliably use to drag out a bitter-sweet tear when I feel the need.

Notes on the music: It's soft rock and sounds quite good, but the lyrics don't have very obvious ties with the animation. The song focuses on the glories of youth and nostalgia for it. The English version is much more in line with the general theme as it is about a deep and binding relationship that can be used as a support system when things get messy. You normally wouldn't expect translated songs to be well written, but the lyrics in the chorus are surprisingly touching.