Anime Review - Sora Yorimo Tooi Basho Episode 1

I think that the hardest time to be an anime fan is during between Fall and Winter seasons where the hype cannot wait but everyone takes a week off which yeah I get why that is as the animation industry is very brutal business and having a break mainly during the New Year is very welcome.  But I just I'm kind of in this dilemma is because I'm waiting for the new Cardcaptor Sakura and Toonami is taking two weeks off instead of one and I want to take a minor break from writing my script as I have no work at the moment so I creaked a bit and decided to look up some of the new shows Crunchyroll has and as of writing this, there isn't much as the Winter Season just started and surprisingly a lot of these shows are winter related so out of all the shows between this and Laid-Back Camp, I decided to watch "A Place Further Than The Universe" as I kind of figured that it's one of those female main cast shows that is a slice of life, with a twist.  You know the ones I'm talking about, like Rocket Girls, it's a slice of life show except that the girls becomes astronauts or Kokoro Connect where people start switching their minds with different bodies.  Something like that.  Here the twist is that a couple of high school girls are going to Antarctica with each girl having their own reason why they want to go on this trip.  It's a lot more down to earth than the examples that I've given out even if it's a bit weird to see these girls go to the coldest place in the world but it's understandable where each of the characters reason to go at least for the first two main characters as we haven't been introduced to the rest of the characters just yet.  As for my overall thoughts on the first episode...I kind of like it.

The first episode is mainly setting up the characters, story and the overall tone for the series as a whole.  We don't have the Antarctica trip just yet as it ends with our two main leads looking at the cruise ship they are going to use so we are getting there just for now we gotten the introductions for our main leads out of the way at least and it's pace is pretty good with a lot happening on the first episode but not too much and the animation is pretty good for this story as you don't have to have fantastic animation, just something good enough.  And hey as a bonus, Madhouse is animating this which explains why the animation and the characters looks like effort was put into this project.

As for the characters, they are simple but memorable so far.  The two leads Mari and Shirase are pretty different from each other but they blend together very well.  With Mari we see that she wants to do something while she's in her youth but is scared to do it even when she tries and Shirase wanted to prove that she could go somewhere as everyone else around her doesn't believe she could do it.  Either of those situations are relatable to anyone how wanted to start on a new journey and seeing these two talk together and coming up with a resolve for the both of them is something sweet.  My only issue with this is the main reason why Shirase wants to go to Antarctica which is to find her mother who is an antarctic explorer that went missing a few years ago and it's the reason why Shirase has been doing multiple jobs just so she could get enough money to go onto this trip.  I mean it's an understandable reason on why she wants to go onto this trip as you could see that when Shirase gets frustrated in the bathroom when she lost the 1 Million Yen and was overjoyed when Mari found it.  It's a reason yes but honestly just having the girls going to Antarctica just for the sake of going to Antarctica would of been good enough and you don't need to bring up the missing mother situation.  That's my only complaint about this story as it's not a bad reason but in this type of story if that part of the story wasn't there then you wouldn't be missing anything and just focus on having the characters having fun and being amazed about the Antarctic.

Aside from that it's a good pilot episode with a good set up and characters with some subtle comedy thrown into the mix making the first episode enjoyable to watch.  Now this isn't the most interesting episode to watch and I'm not expecting this show to be excellent but I do see myself continuing to watching this just to see what creative scenarios the team could come up with when we finally do get to the Antarctic.  After all, it's been a while since I've sit down and watched a slice of life series with a twist and the twist is good enough to see what happens next.  With Madhouse animating this, these set ups and characters it's one show that I'm curious to see how this plays out.