Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete is… Oh god this is going to invalidate everything I ever say about anime… Guy drops Nanatsu no Taizai and starts praising this… I’d totally be shot by Japanese anime fans!
Well, you all know where I’m going with this, so let’s point out the elephants in the room first.
The animation of Ushinawareta is the ugliest I have seen in a long time. Even if you get used to it after half an episode like I managed to, there are still instances where the animation quality is so bad that it ruins all of your immersion. I don’t even want to know what the experience is like for someone who actually cares how an anime looks visually… Painful probably. Lots of QUALITY and lots of CG, although the CG is pretty good compared to most previous attempts…
One day we may have CG that looks as good as the current standards in drawn animation, but that day isn’t today.
It’s a shame because when they focus on the animation of a scene it looks great, but most of the time it looks like a show from 10 years ago.
The other big problem is also visual. The backgrounds and the various establishing shots all look like they were drawn by someone who skipped all of their Design Technology classes. If you can’t draw, you could at least get google sketchup in there or something…
If you are still reading with interest, then congratulations! I’d tell you what I think of the story now, but seriously, if you haven’t seen any of Ushinawareta yet, go watch the first episode and then come back.
Okay… done?
As you can imagine, a lot of people will probably compare this show to an incredibly popular show that centers around the same thing… There are a lot of similarities. I even looked up the dates of their releases, and Ushinawareta came out around a year later. Not saying anything incriminating, but I think they got SOME inspiration from it.
I can’t speak for the whole of the VN, but the anime does seemingly follow the same steps as it’s more popular older sibling Steins;Gate.
There are a whole bunch of differences that sets Ushinawareta’s story apart though. Things that make Ushinawareta worth watching.
First of all, the obvious difference is that the character who seems most like the protagonist isn’t the one stuck in a loop. Someone else takes on that role.
Ushinawareta is a lot more light hearted as well. Unlike S;G which builds up a claustrophobic atmosphere, Ushinawareta remains open and airy, something I partially attribute to it’s focus on the stars. No matter what happens, the stars will still be there to look up at… That simple idea is enough to give our characters hope and resolve.
I remember a lot of people complained that S;G was slow to start, something I never really noticed while it was airing. I did notice a similar thing in Ushinawareta though. The first half of the slow is spent building specific characters and setting up for future events. Somehow this time isn’t spent very well… Despite what it invested in characters, the cast of Ushinawareta is very plain and boring. The character we should care about most is… annoying. The character who is doomed to be sidelined is incredibly kind. The mystery girl is arguably the best. The protagonist fits his role well. Then the other two are just… there… helping.
The important thing though, is that the characters are likable enough to invest time into. You want to see what happens to specific characters because… well, this fits with the main theme of the anime very well. The time between one episode and the next is enough to bring the cast into mind. This anime isn’t a frantic “there has to be a way!” like Steins;Gate. Ushinawareta is a “we can get it this time.” There isn’t a big pull into the next episode. There isn’t a crazy amount of drama to keep you excited. Instead there is hope for a happy ending.You don’t get left with the wishes of a mad scientist… You get the heartfelt wish of a friend…
“I’ll see you again tomorrow, right?”
That’s the name of Ushinawareta’s Ending Song. There are a couple versions of the song, and 4 different videos to go along with it.
One is sung by Hatsumi Takada, the voice of Kaori. The other is sung by Akane Tomonaga, the voice of Yui. Both of them are beautiful to listen to.
This brings up my favorite thing about this ending song: the lyrics are heart-wrenching and intelligent. The meaning behind the lyrics seemingly changes every 2 or 3 episodes. As you can guess from the singers chosen, both Kaori and Yui can be seen as the person speaking these lyrics… however the song works from the perspective of other characters as well, the most obvious being the protagonist’s pov
Normally the music in an anime doesn’t matter much to me. Unless a track breaks through the animation, the story, the characters and the world, I probably won’t remember it even existed. Ushinawareta’s ED doesn’t break through… it enhances. It’s extra material to add to the story. It connects you to the characters you may not have thought much of, and it makes you think of everything that happened throughout the episode from the view of specific characters.
Can you tell how much I love this song yet, because it may just be my favorite anime ED ever. If we say that every anime I’ve seen has but a single ED song, that’s around 650-700 songs that I put Ushinawareta’s ED above. Of course, a lot of anime have 2, or 3, or sometimes even 4 ending songs. A few have 12 or 13 ending songs…
The OP of this show is great too, but the ED just obliterates it in every possible way.
I don’t even know what to think of that…
That sums up my thoughts on the show very well. Looking at it how I look at every other anime, I can confidently say that this anime is bad for it’s time. 3 or 4 years ago it might have been great, but in 2014 it is a low average anime…. However I can happily say that Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete is my favorite anime of Fall 2014.
On my Twitter or my Anime-Planet, there is a list of the single anime I recommend the most each year since 1990. At the bottom left is a small list of five anime that is titled “Top 5 favorite anime.”
That list is a strange one. To me, “top 5 favorite” is different to “the anime I like most.”
“Top” is a list of enjoyable shows that are also critically strong in my mind and worth making public. The anime I like the most don’t rate very well critically in my mind. Things like Kanon ’06 and H20 are the anime I like most, but they are average at best…
Ushinawareta makes that list. It is easily one of my favorite anime. I’d honestly never recommend it to anyone, or put it on any public list, but it’s a favorite.
So there you go! Ushinawareta! Don’t watch it!
Please, no hate. 
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