MA in literature. Critic of otaku culture, literature, and the arts.
I had been looking forward to HELLO WORLD ever since I saw its trailer before Weathering with You. After Weathering with You sent me home disappointed, I even began to think that HELLO WORLD might surpass it. The promotional line on the official website only strengthened that conviction: “Having broken new ground since Your Name, Japanese animation will surely open the door to a new world—HELLO WORLD—this autumn.” In the end, though, while HELLO WORLD was reasonably well made, it neither lived up to my expectations nor accomplished the feat its publicity promised. Perhaps this was chiefly because I had expected too much. After all, if even Makoto Shinkai himself cannot surpass Your Name, how could a production on the scale of HELLO WORLD manage it? So what exactly had I hoped for, and how did the film meet—or fail to meet—those expectations? Let me take a little time to explain.
Musicality in Animated Films
This was not, in fact, the first time I had looked forward to an animated film that might surpass Your Name. The last film to raise those hopes was Fireworks. Given the grand promises it made and the trailers it showed us, I am sure quite a few people shared my expectations. Things did not turn out that way. After seeing Fireworks, my overwhelming reaction was: the trailer had conned us. The biggest con was probably that Kenshi Yonezu’s song never appeared in the film proper. In other words, the musicality on display in the trailer was entirely absent from the film itself. The same goes for HELLO WORLD.
Since the success of Your Name, putting vocal pop songs into animated films seems to have become a trend, and HELLO WORLD was no exception. The way the trailer paired 2027Sound’s songs with its images, and the emphasis its promotional videos placed on 2027Sound’s music, kept raising my expectations for the film’s musicality. Naturally, Your Name was my benchmark. My first viewing left me deeply disappointed. A second viewing improved my impression somewhat, but not enough to rescue my low opinion of its musicality.
At the beginning, the coordination of image and music does have its merits: sound, image, and the characters’ feelings are fairly well synchronized. Take the sequence in which our timid protagonist Naomi, who has no mind of his own and can never make a decision, buys a self-help book on changing his personality, tries its advice, and fails again and again. We repeatedly see the book’s pages turn to a chapter offering another way to change his personality, followed by Naomi trying it and failing. Whenever the page-turning shot returns, the musical theme returns with it. This sort of synchronization is quite basic, but precisely because it is basic, it is also an important part of an animated film’s musicality. As the story progresses, however, the clumsiness of the coordination begins to show. In scene after scene, the music is subjected to heavy-handed cuts to make it synchronize with the images. It stops dead; the editing is terribly jarring. There is even a cue that lasts a full minute on the soundtrack album but is cut down to just a few seconds in the film. Then there is the passage that skips over everyday events in music-video form, plainly imitating the “Zenzenzense” sequence in Your Name. The vocal song so heavily promoted in the trailers not only ends abruptly; its introduction has been cut as well, so that it begins right at the climax. The transition is so forced that it leaves you at a loss.
Pre-scoring
These clumsy edits expose a misunderstanding of Your Name’s musicality: HELLO WORLD has learned that image and music should be synchronized, but not how to achieve it. As my use of the word “editing” suggests, these abrupt, heavy-handed cuts prove that the film’s approach to synchronizing sound and image remains an extension of the post-production sound editing common in television anime. The musicality of Shinkai’s work, by contrast, rests on pre-scoring. To achieve a sufficiently satisfying relationship between image and music, Shinkai uses an animatic—a timed storyboard with sound—bringing sound design forward to the storyboard stage. In Storyboard Pro, he adjusts the storyboard drawings, the music, and the characters’ dialogue, which he voices himself. Coordination and revisions with the music staff are also discussed first within this animatic blueprint. Only once the relationship between image and sound has been designed does the project move into animation proper. It takes this careful audiovisual planning to achieve the musicality of Your Name. Its soundtrack album, for instance, even has something of a narrative structure: hearing a melody seems enough to bring a particular scene back to mind. Of course, the versions used in the film differ from those on the album; they have been edited too. In fact, to make editing easier and more flexible, most animation scores use a structure built around the repetition of short thematic sections. This allows a cut to the ending at any point, making it easier to accommodate the duration of the images. Your Name’s score naturally bears traces of these edited endings, but they are not as forced as those in HELLO WORLD, and certainly do not leave a cue reduced to a few seconds. We should also notice that the musical introductions in Your Name are almost never cut. This gives the portrayal of the characters’ emotions the buildup it needs, making it easier for viewers to enter into those feelings. Such coordination of music and image can be achieved only through pre-scoring. Post-scoring may occasionally produce a good match, but without an overall sound design, its deficiencies will inevitably begin to show, just as they do in HELLO WORLD.
One point needs emphasizing here. What matters most in pre-scoring is not whether recording—or composition—takes place before the animation: the “pre.” Film music, for instance, has the term “film scoring,” meaning that music is composed to fit images already shot on film. What matters is whether the images are designed in coordination with the sound: the “scoring.” The most devoted practitioner of pre-scoring, and its earliest champion, is that familiar king of the musical: Disney. As early as the 1940s, Disney had fully adopted pre-scoring to coordinate image and sound in its animated features, and through pre-scoring invented what modern animation uses to control the timing and rhythm of animated movement: the exposure sheet, or time sheet.1 What I find most regrettable about HELLO WORLD is that, despite being a 3D-animated film, despite having its music composed in advance and its dialogue recorded before 3D production began, it still adopted the post-production sound-editing methods of television anime. It gave up the advantages that 3D animation has precisely as 3D animation: coordinating image and music more easily, and adjusting images to music more directly and at lower cost.
To be honest, the musicality of Shinkai’s animated films is neither unique nor especially outstanding; one might even call it mediocre. At the level of individual sequences, pre-scoring has long been widely used for song-and-dance performances in idol anime. Many television anime opening sequences are also pre-scored, and historically, the method was already in use in Isao Takahata’s day. Editing a trailer can itself be regarded as a form of pre-scoring. So however poor the musicality of HELLO WORLD proper, its trailers can always achieve a good effect by cutting the images to fit the music. The trailer con of Fireworks works on exactly the same principle. Seen this way, Shinkai’s approach to sound design is indeed quite mediocre. Yet even with a method this mediocre, no successor has emerged in Japanese animated cinema today who can surpass him—or even use it properly. That really is a dispiriting thought.
A Story That Turns on Its Head in the Final Second
Disappointing as its musicality may be, the film’s story is very good. The trailer’s promise that “this story/world will turn on its head in the final second” does indeed deliver a shock. Mado Nozaki, the author of the original novel,2 certainly excels at writing twists like this—whether you take “twist” as praise or otherwise. I imagine everyone still remembers the ending of KADO: The Right Answer. Here is the story. I will set the twists and spoilers apart in block quotes, so anyone wishing to avoid them can skip those passages.3
The story takes place in Kyoto in the near future. Our protagonist, Naomi Katagaki, is timid, lacks independent judgment, and is indecisive, but wants to change. One day, he meets himself from ten years in the future. His future self abruptly reveals the world’s secret: this world is a data record of the real world, stored in a quantum computer jointly developed by the fictional Kyoto University (京斗大学) and a search-engine company. Naomi himself is only a fragment of that data. His future self, however, comes from the real world ten years later. For someone living inside a data world, the distinction between reality and virtuality is meaningless. Unable to think for himself, Naomi accepts this revelation without resistance and asks what his real-world self has come to do. Almost jokingly, his real-world self replies: “I’m here to get you a girlfriend.” Behind the joke, though, lies a tragedy beyond rescue. Shortly after his real-world self begins dating the heroine, Ruri Ichigyō, a lightning strike plunges them into tragedy before their happiness can even begin. His real-world self—I will call him NAOMI from here on, and his virtual-world self Naomi—has entered this virtual record of reality precisely to change that tragic history. His virtual self asks: “But even if you change the history of the virtual world, she won’t come back to life in the real one.” NAOMI tacitly acknowledges this. For him, changing the history of this virtual world is simply a way to see Ruri Ichigyō happy and smiling, to witness the possibility of a happiness the two of them never had. If he can witness all this, he will be content, even if it is only his virtual self who takes his place beside her.
Rescue Through Substitution
This kind of rescue through substitution is common in some of the sekaikei and loop-based bishōjo games of the 2000s.4 Take Muv-Luv Alternative. In a world devastated by the BETA, Takeru Shirogane and Sumika Kagami have died before their love can be fulfilled. In their place are the 00 Unit, a biological computer made from Sumika’s spine and brain, and a Causality Conductor that the 00 Unit has created from an aggregate of information drawn from Takeru Shiroganes in parallel worlds. So when Takeru, as the Causality Conductor, declares his love to Sumika, as the 00 Unit, she rejects him. For the Sumika who died in this BETA-ravaged world, and for the 00 Unit that replaces her and inherits her dying wishes, a Causality Conductor assembled from information drawn from Takeru Shiroganes in other parallel worlds is not the Takeru Shirogane she loved. Nor is this an isolated case. Another bishōjo game of the 2000s, Baldr Sky, has a similar structure. The love between its protagonist Kou and heroine Sora is torn apart by a nanomachine leak. Forced to watch Sora reduced to a pulp by nanomachines, Kou loses his capacity for compassion. He lives as a brutal cyber-mercenary in a world laid waste by nanomachines, fighting and killing in cyberspace and physical space alike. One day, he suddenly loses his memory during a battle in cyberspace. As he searches for his memories, he begins to lay down his emotional burdens and form relationships with other women. Completing several heroines’ routes unlocks a new part of the story. In this new route, the protagonist awakens to find himself in a cyberworld he cannot log out of, where he has a dreamlike reunion with the dead Sora. Yet despite this hard-won reunion, Sora rejects Kou’s declaration of love. This world, World 0, turns out to be different from the previous world, World 1. In World 1, Kou survived and Sora died. And World 1 was created by World 0, where Sora survived and Kou died. The Kou who exists in World 0 is merely an AI replica that the couple once created in cyberspace. The Kou declaring his feelings to Sora is only an AI imitating Kou’s emotions. This Kou is not the Kou whom Sora loved. The cherished person already lost can never be saved; the happiness already shattered can never be recovered. Both of these leading examples of loop-based bishōjo games from the 2000s have this tragic structure. Intriguingly, their endings also arrive at much the same solution. In Muv-Luv Alternative, the Causality Conductor, an aggregate of information drawn from Takeru Shiroganes across all parallel worlds, moves the 00 Unit by understanding himself as the aggregate of Takerus in every world, and of every Takeru’s love for Sumika. In Baldr Sky, Kou, the AI replica, wins back Sora’s heart by understanding himself as an aggregate that inherits the memories of the Kous in every world—an aggregate of all their longing for Sora. Both overcome the difficulty of substitution by understanding themselves as transcendent selves. At the end of Baldr Sky, once nanomachines have reconstructed a body in the real world, the AI replica Kou can actually enter it and reunite with Sora in reality. Kou’s identity is thus guaranteed by his return to a body. In both works, the problem of the singularity of “this one” and “that one” is overcome in the form of identity. After seeing the part of HELLO WORLD described above, I briefly thought it too was a story of rescue through substitution. But, as the revelation of the world’s secret at the very beginning foreshadows, Nozaki has a twist for us.
The First Twist
Having agreed to save Ruri Ichigyō, the two begin practicing with Good Design, a glove that can manipulate the virtual world’s data and takes the form of the three-legged crow that arrived with Naomi’s real-world self. At the same time, they work together, using a notebook from the future as a walkthrough for winning Ruri’s affection. A romantic comedy unfolds. But as he follows this romantic walkthrough, Naomi does not do everything NAOMI tells him to. According to the historical record, the second-hand book fair that he and Ruri have been eagerly awaiting is called off after a fire caused by the lighting destroys the books. Most of those books came from Ruri’s late grandfather’s library. Faced with this double blow to Ruri, NAOMI chose to stay by her side and comfort her. He wants Naomi to do the same, preserving history and following the walkthrough to a successful ending. But Naomi cannot bear Ruri’s unhappiness and uses Good Design to reconstruct the burned books. His actions differ, but because everything he does is for Ruri, they still move her. After the book fair goes ahead successfully, Ruri gladly accepts his declaration of love.
Changing history too soon, however, alerts the virtual world’s management system to an anomaly. On the day of the rescue, the system’s enforcers—hordes of fox-masked police—go into action, attacking Ruri. Naomi tries to stop them but is forcibly transferred to the site of the lightning strike. In the final showdown, the virtual self and the real self work together, using Good Design to create a miniature black hole and save Ruri from both the fox masks and the lightning. History has been changed; love has been fulfilled. But it all seems to have gone too smoothly. And so Nozaki gives us the first twist.
In an instant, Naomi is stripped of Good Design, which turns into a cage around Ruri. NAOMI murmurs: “The barrier between the quantum mind and the body has to be removed.” It turns out that the real-world Ruri did not die completely after the lightning strike; she was merely left brain-dead. Transplanting an uncopyable quantum mind into her body would save her in the real world. But for the transplant to work, the barrier between quantum mind and body must be removed: her quantum mind must come infinitely close to its state before brain death. So NAOMI has used Naomi to make Ruri fall in love with Naomi, bringing her mind into alignment with its state on their date before the lightning strike. Now that everything is ready, NAOMI leaves the virtual world with Ruri’s mind. Naomi is left slumped on the ground in despair.
The Second Twist
To save his Ruri, NAOMI has endured humiliation and hardship for almost ten years. After happening upon a lecture by Professor Senko of Kyoto University on using quantum information to repair nerves in the brain, he devoted all his time and energy to joining Senko’s team. He worked his way up from the lowliest research assistant to head of systems administration. Once he had sufficient access privileges, NAOMI used a handmade immersion device to attempt to enter the quantum recording system again and again, paying an enormous price: burns across his back, then spinal nerve damage that left one leg paralyzed. Yet his sacrifices seem to have brought him no reward. When he pours out ten years of longing to the newly awakened Ruri, she pushes him away. Bewildered, she says: “You’re not Naomi.” And she is right. The Naomi this Ruri fell in love with is not the Naomi before her, but the one who risked drawing the system’s attention to restore the old books she had lost and undo her misfortune. NAOMI is not surprised. He was prepared for rejection. It is only temporary; he is the only Naomi in this world, and time will wear away the differences between the two Naomis. Meanwhile, the transfer of Ruri’s mind has caused a data error in the virtual world, triggering a repair process.
Back in the virtual world, Naomi has no time left for despair. As the repair process begins, the world gradually collapses, its fragments drawn into an endless abyss in the sky—the same abyss that swallowed Ruri. If he jumps in, perhaps he can see her again. Mustering his courage for one last gamble, Naomi leaps into the abyss. After a fantastical sequence of cyber imagery, he arrives in a mysterious cyberspace and encounters the three-legged crow once more. To his astonishment, it can speak. It asks whether he wants to take Ruri back. Surprised as he is, Naomi does not hesitate. He answers firmly, and the crow transforms into a new glove. Naomi regains the power of Good Design.
In the world where NAOMI has decided to let time close the gulf, the hospital room door suddenly opens. What he sees is a fox-masked policeman. Fox-masked police abruptly surround the windows too. Before NAOMI can react, they pin him to the floor, while the others descend on Ruri’s bed and seize her by the throat. Only amid his terror, rage, and helplessness does NAOMI realize that his world, and he himself, are also virtual. Suddenly, memories of the virtual-world Naomi surface in his mind. By the time he comes to his senses, Ruri has been saved: Naomi has burst in and restrained every fox-masked policeman against the walls. With the danger temporarily past, Naomi punches NAOMI in the face, takes Ruri, and prepares to return to their world. NAOMI is left bewildered, slumping helplessly to the floor.
NAOMI, who thought he was the one living in the real world, turns out to be merely another inhabitant of a virtual one. Those inside a virtual world cannot discover for themselves whether it is real or false. After this second twist, the story returns to the structure of rescue through substitution discussed above. The NAOMI of this false “real world” can never save his Ruri. All he can do is sink into helplessness and despair.
The Final Twist
To send Ruri back to her original world, they must reach the Grand Stairway, the famous sightseeing spot beside Kyoto Station, install a data-conversion device on the steps, and have her walk all the way from top to bottom. But the system’s mechanism for repairing intrusions from other worlds—in other words, its attempt to eliminate Ruri—is still at work. Fox-masked police surge toward Naomi and Ruri like a flood, like a tsunami, blocking their path. Just then, NAOMI drives up to help. In the car, he speaks of his regret. Returning to his original purpose before the first twist, he resolves to help Naomi send Ruri back to her own world.
After a heart-stopping action sequence, the three reach the top of the Grand Stairway, clear the crowds, and set up the conversion device. Before descending, Ruri asks NAOMI: “Are you Naomi Katagaki?” Touched by this unexpected question, NAOMI answers: “I’m just an extra.” But Ruri seems to see through everything. She gently embraces him and says, “Thank you for loving me,” then turns and makes her unsteady way down the steps. Her words break through NAOMI’s last defenses. Unable to stop the tears however hard he tries, he sobs out the words he has kept suppressed for so long: “I loved you.”
Ruri’s conversion succeeds. Only Naomi’s own conversion remains. But the system’s repair effort does not stop after Ruri returns: there are still two Naomis in this world. Repairing the duplicate data address—eliminating Naomi—has now become its highest priority. The fox masks pile together into a giant monster, destroy the conversion device on the Grand Stairway, and enter a final battle with the two Naomis. Unfortunately, even with Good Design, Naomi cannot match a repair system deploying all its computational power. Kyoto Tower, still carrying its tourists, is hurled at him. Naomi struggles until blood flows from his mouth and nose and his eyes are bloodshot, yet all he can do is stop the tower from falling. Knowing how the system works, NAOMI explains that its purpose is to eliminate the duplicate address. Naomi need only use Good Design to eliminate him, and the crisis will be over. But Naomi refuses. Even though NAOMI betrayed him and took Ruri away, he cannot bring himself to feel anger. Instead, he feels NAOMI’s suffering as his own. For even if they have lived through different histories in different worlds, NAOMI is Naomi. He is me. His wish is my wish. His happiness is my happiness. So Naomi rejects NAOMI’s proposal and uses the last of his strength to attack the system.
Sadly, the system is still a little stronger. Just as a homing spike is about to strike Naomi, NAOMI, dragging his paralyzed leg, takes the blow for him. A small miracle seems to occur at this final moment: for the sake of Naomi’s survival and happiness, the paralyzed nerves regain the power of movement. NAOMI signals to Naomi to eliminate him. Amid Naomi’s cries, and with his own last words—“Live on and be happy”—NAOMI turns to ash. The system’s monster stops dead. Seizing the interval while the fox-masked police are inactive, Professor Senko switches off the quantum recording device’s limiter. Released from control, the quantum world regains its original power. With its infinite recording capacity freed from human restrictions, the quantum recording device abruptly vanishes from this virtual world, disappearing into the far reaches of the universe. Naomi, too, is sent back to the world where he belongs. After passing through a cyber-styled space, Naomi and Ruri awaken in a new world. Here, there are no longer any aerial drones recording Kyoto in its entirety. In the sunlight, Ruri asks, “Are we back in our original world?” Naomi answers that this is probably a new world—HELLO WORLD. The dust of the vanishing Good Design adorns their embrace and kiss. Their story draws to a close.
The camera cuts. NAOMI wakes in a haze, looking into what seems to be a hospital room. Through his muffled hearing, he catches the cheers of medical staff. Nearby, a woman in a white coat speaks in the voice of Good Design, the three-legged crow: “The container and its contents must be synchronized. You took action for the people you cherish. Now, at last, your mind is synchronized with its container.” His vision gradually clears. The woman in the white coat is the person he knows best and cherishes most. With tears streaming down her face, the adult Ruri Ichigyō embraces NAOMI on the hospital bed. The camera turns outside. Their reunion is taking place in a developed lunar city. Here, at last, the film comes to an end.
This is the last-moment twist promised by the trailer. In the genuinely real world, it was NAOMI who died, not Ruri. From Ruri’s dialogue, we can infer that on that fateful day, NAOMI probably sacrificed himself to save her. To repair his brain, Ruri reconstructed his mind from quantum data. But to synchronize mind and body, NAOMI had to approach the mental state he was in just before death. In the final battle, his sacrifice to save the happiness of two people he cherished—which was also his own happiness with Ruri—coincided with his state before dying to save Ruri. The barrier between container and contents was removed; NAOMI’s brain death was repaired. His happiness with Ruri, too, finally reached its HAPPY END. More intriguing still is the final twist’s use of 2D animation, entirely different from the rest of the film. The 2D world is the real world; the 3D world is the world of cyberspace.
Nozaki, a Writer of the 2000s
HELLO WORLD deserves credit for this nesting-doll structure of multilayered “meta” twists. Even readers who skipped the spoilers can let their imaginations work from the three twists signaled by the headings. On the one hand, this structure resembles the bishōjo games of the 2000s discussed above; on the other, it was also a device once popular in the mystery fiction of that decade. Examples include Ōtarō Maijō’s Tsukumo Jūku and NISIOISIN’s Kimi to Boku no Kowareta Sekai.5 Both use interlocking layers of “meta” structure, with the contents of one chapter reduced to a novel in the next. In the latter, NISIOISIN even deliberately uses one-sided quotation marks—only opening marks, never their closing halves—to give this ongoing succession of “meta” layers a sense of speed. One by one, the murders that the hero and heroine encounter in London are reduced to exercises in novel-writing. Only at the final layer do we learn that the pair have not yet reached London at all: every previous layer belongs to a round-robin novel they have been writing while waiting at the airport. In this sense, Nozaki is very much a writer of the 2000s.
Speaking of the 2000s, another image that cannot go unmentioned is the crow. This crow plainly draws on Sora, the crow in AIR, that familiar sekaikei classic that epitomizes impossibility. Yet although it draws on AIR, its role is clearly different. In AIR, the crow embodies impossibility: the protagonist, and with him the player, has lost every choice and can only look on quietly from the crow’s perspective as Misuzu dies. In HELLO WORLD, the crow is a game-master-level power capable of changing the virtual world’s data: it represents omnipotence. But after that final twist, can this omnipotence still be called true omnipotence? I believe you already have your answer.
Conclusion
Finally, I want to discuss adaptation. Immediately after my first viewing, my strongest impression was actually “action movie.” For all its three twists, the film gives far too little attention to the characters’ psychological responses to them. In their place are exquisitely crafted cyberspace sequences and battles. Troubled by this, I bought and read the novel, only to discover that those elaborate cyberspace sequences and battles occupy very little of it. As befits the strengths of the novel as a form, Nozaki’s book is far more concerned with changes in the characters’ inner lives. The atmosphere and presentation of cyberspace, along with the descriptions of combat, are kept to the bare minimum necessary.
This leads me to suspect that the director entrusted with the animated adaptation—Tomohiko Itō, who made his name directing Sword Art Online—has filled the film so excessively with the visions of cyberspace he excels at that he has destroyed its delicate portrayal of the characters’ inner lives. Perhaps many viewers prefer Itō’s visually driven adaptation. But as an unabashed Your Name booster, what I want to see is the characters’ inner lives and conflicts, and a musicality that moves with those inward fluctuations.
After seeing the film at T·JOY Kyoto, I needed only a few minutes on foot to reach the Grand Stairway beside Kyoto Station for an anime pilgrimage. Rainwater had collected on the stairway’s viewing platform and in the little bamboo garden, just like the water on the Grand Stairway in the film’s final, new world. Yet looking toward Kyoto Tower, I found myself little moved. Perhaps Itō’s poor handling of the adaptation was to blame; perhaps my expectations of it had been too high. But as someone deeply shaped by the literature and arts of the 2000s, I have to say that I still lean toward the former.
Postscript
On the question of HELLO WORLD’s musicality: I have just read an interview with director Tomohiko Itō. It turns out that HELLO WORLD used Storyboard Pro, just like Shinkai; paid attention to coordinating sound and image during production, just like Shinkai; used pre-scoring, just like Shinkai; spent almost a year working with the music team, just like Shinkai; and made an animatic, just like Shinkai, then showed it to the production committee and made more than a hundred changes. At first, I thought I should spare Itō a little embarrassment. I assumed he simply had not learned the process. I had no idea he had learned the whole thing—had practically copied Shinkai’s approach outright. And it still turned out such a mess. All I can say is, I had no idea the gap in people’s abilities … could be this vast.