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UCHUU SHOW E YOUKOSO

MOVIE

MOVIE
Dubbed
SOURCE
ORIGINAL
RELEASE
February 18, 2010
LENGTH
136 min

DESCRIPTION

A tiny mountain village in a remote woodland region. Five primary school kids have come together in this idyllic spot in order to spend their summer holidays at a camp. At first the children enjoy carefree days amidst unspoiled nature far away from adult supervision. But their life changes dramatically when they come across what they believe to be a small dog, badly in need of help. The creature – known as Pochi – turns out not to be a dog at all but an alien on an important mission.

It seems there is a mysterious substance on earth that is coveted throughout the universe. Pochi had almost found it but was so badly injured during a fight that he had to give up his search. Thanks to the children's help, the alien survives – and decides to reward them generously. “Where would you most like to travel?” is the question Pochi puts to his rescuers. Their answer is prompt, if vague:

“As far as possible!” Pochi suggests they try the moon first of all, and so, the alien whisks away the kids to the satellite next door. This marks the beginning of an absolutely amazing adventure.

During the course of their travels they discover that the substance coveted throughout the universe is in fact also integral to Japanese cuisine – and it just so happens that one of the kids has some of this mysterious substance in his pocket.

(Source: Berlinale.de)

CAST

Natsuki Koyama
Tomoyo Kurosawa
Noriko Nishimura
Tamaki Matsumoto
Amane Suzuki
Honoka Ikezuki
Pochi Rickman
Keiji Fujiwara
Kouji Harada
Takuto Yoshinaga
Kiyoshi Satou
Shoutarou Uzawa
Ink
Mayu Iino
Tony
Nobuo Tobita
Neppo
Ryuusei Nakao
Gouba
Banjou Ginga
Mary
Rei Igarashi

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REVIEWS

Lokyaziis
64/100
The Singular Wasabi's Space Odyssey! (French Review)
Welcome to THE SPACE SHOW est un anime d'aventure SF, de Koji Masunari et Hideyuki Kurata.
Honnêtement, dès les vingts premières minutes ont renifle une ambiance à la Ghibli. Il est claire que le réalisateur voulait que ce soit un film familial aussi large que possible. Malgré un sujet principal plutôt orienté adulte !
_"Cinq mômes sont sur le point d’avoir, le plus grand, le plus étrange et le plus fous voyage d'été de leur vie."_
Les scènes dans l'espace, les mondes extraterrestres et le character design sont très créatifs et colorés.
Les animations quand à elles, vont d'une qualité remarquable à du limite schématique dans certaines scènes où le nombre de détails et de différents personnages individuels évoluant, est désordonnée, démesurée, surprenant... Ce n'est pas un reproche, au contraire, le fait d'avoir simplifié les détails rend l'anime plus vif et plus fluide.
_"Un petit village de montagne dans une région forestière isolée. Cinq enfants d'école primaire se réunissent dans un camp d'été de cet endroit idyllique pour y passer une petite semaine. En se promenant dans la campagne japonaise, ils trouvent un chien blessé et le ramènent à leur camp, seulement pour découvrir qu'il n'est pas du tout un chien, mais Pochi, un botaniste extraterrestre, sur Terre pour retrouver une plante rare et puissante, appelé Zughaan. Pour les remercier des soins qu'il a reçu, Pochi emmène les enfants dans une colonie spatiale sur la face cachée de la lune..."_
Welcome to THE SPACE SHOW, c'est un melting-pot interstellaire où on assiste à un défilé incessant de créatures extraterrestres, de vaisseaux spatiaux méduses, de trains dragons et autres joyeusetés.
Les rebondissements de l'intrigue sont rapides, mais par-contre, les personnages manquent d'originalité, d'innovation. Ils ont tous des personnalités assez stéréotypées (le geek, l'indépendant, l'aventureux, le leader..etc.).

La musique est composée par Yoshihiro Ike, qui est principalement connu au Japon comme bassiste pour plusieurs groupes, mais il tire sa réputation de la composition de musiques originales pour des animes tels que Blood: The Last Vampire.
Welcome to THE SPACE SHOW a le même genre d’orchestre mélodramatique générique, ce qui est, pour être honnête, un peu décevant pour cette odyssée de l’espace. Il y a aussi de bonnes chansons originales interprétées par Sasja Antheunis, ainsi que le thème du générique de fin par Susan Boyle, mais à part être agréable, cela n’ajoute ni atmosphère ni émotion à l’anime..
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AstroAndy
70/100
A Delight for all the Space Fantasy Lovers till some extent
A Space Opera which I always wanted to see but wish that some part of it I wouldn't have seen. It is a story of five children who in their summer vacations meet with an Outerspace alien and then an adventure in Space follows.

The Movie is made by A-1 Pictures, and the animators did put a lot of heart in making it. It shows. The Visual Experience was brilliant. The World they built was very well thought-out as well as executed properly. It has a poppy feel to it. All the character designs were done very well.
Characters themselves were pretty likable too. It shows us a representation of kids like kids, their kiddish issues and dilemma through which they go. We meet our gang of 5 members Natsuki, Amane, Kiyoshi, Noriko and Koji who find this alien dog Pochi who takes them to Space. I loved the dynamic between the sisters, reminded me a bit of My Neighbor Totoro.
The Story takes us on a journey where we get to know our gang a bit more, doing their kiddish things, making trouble also learning about new things.
It was a chill-out in Space like the imaginations of a colourful mind about Space coming out on a screen, a thing I always wanted to see and I am enthralled to see that. It will be a delight for the people who want to see Astronomical explorations, imaginations.

That is 1hr & 30mins into the movie. Now, here is where the adventure kicks in. And it was underwhelming to say the least. The methods which negative character use to reach to the end were pretty Cringe to say, even the motivations are so puny. There were pretty weird dialogues that didn't make any sense at all. There are pretty glaring loop-holes in this part. And this all goes on for the next 30 mins.
The music was done very well, BGM never felt out of place. It melted very well with the activity happening in the foreground.

It would have been a beautiful, flawless journey but making it an adventure is what dipped down the excellent setup. I can even say, if it had been a better thought-out movie, it could have even beaten Star Wars in terms of the scale at which it is presented. There were many things that just didn't make sense. It felt like making it an adventure was a second thought.

To put it in short it is like watching The Promised Neverland S1 and binging S2 just after it. Just not as traumatizing but equally disappointing.
It is a good one time watch and Space Opera Fans will find something for themselves for sure in it (✿◡‿◡)
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TheAnimeBingeWatcher
75/100
Comes so close to being a masterpiece, but stumbles in the final act. Still highly recommended.
Picture the following scenario: you stumble across a show or movie you’ve never heard of. You have no idea what it’s about, but it looks interesting, so you go in with no expectations and hope you’re in for a decent time. As you watch it, it wins you over more and more, hitting all the right notes at all the right moments, accomplishing cinematic feats you’ve never really seen anywhere before. Eventually, things get so damn good that you’re convinced you stumbled across an unappreciated masterpiece. “Why doesn’t anybody talk about this anymore?” you wonder. “This should be a cult classic on everyone’s lips!” And then you cross into the final stretch, and suddenly, things take a turn for the worse. Not disastrously so, but enough to viciously yank you out of the blissful trance you were just in. By the time it’s over, you no longer wonder why this piece of media wasn’t popular enough to linger in the public consciousness. And while you still had a fantastic time with it, you’re also left with the bitter disappointment of knowing it was almost something truly special. That is the experience I just had with Welcome to the Space Show, an anime film from 2010 that comes so agonizingly close to being amazing, but stumbles into just being really damn good instead.

The story begins on earth, following a group of five elementary school kids in a rural Japanese village as they head out for a self-run summer camp. Natsuki is a rambunctious sixth grader with dreams of being a hero, Amane’s her younger cousin who’s still mad at her for losing their pet rabbit, Kouji dreams of being a space scientist one day, Kiyoshi’s the sensible older one who acts as their teacher/counselor, and Noriko’s just happy to be included. Together they make quite the rambunctious friend group, but their summer antics take a turn for the weird when they find a talking dog injured in the woods. Turns out he’s actually an alien named Pochi, and as thanks for saving his life, he offers to take them on a trip to space to see all the crazy shenanigans going on just outside Earth’s gaze. Pretty soon, the kids are on a fantastical adventure through alien planets, galactic cities, and all sorts of wild and imaginative setpieces that director Kouki Masunari probably had bouncing around in his head for a while. Meanwhile, the mysterious bad guys who injured Pochi in the first place are still hot on his trail, and it won’t be long before the kids get wrapped up in a much bigger story than a simple sightseeing tour.

It’s a pretty simple setup for a family-friendly sci-fi flick, and you won’t find too much creativity in the story beats to come. What you will find, though, is one of the most gorgeous, entertaining kids’ adventure movies this side of Studio Ghibli. From start to finish, Welcome to the Space show bombards you with imagery the likes of which you’ve never seen before. Giant space stations the size of the moon, living interplanetary bullet trains reminiscent of My Neighbor Totoro’s Catbus on acid, alien designs ranging from adorable to insane, nebulas and supernovas and antimatter fields, and enough surreal art-deco/freeform aesthetics to put Masaaki Yuasa himself to shame. And all of it’s brought to life with consistently jaw-dropping animation, bowling you over with overwhelming awe and wonder on a near-constant basis. Nor does it skimp on the subtler character details either; the way these kids emote and dance through this off-the-rails vision of interstellar civilization grounds all the wild imagination in a real sense of tangible believability. This is one of the best-looking anime A-1 pictures has ever produced, even a decade later. I could spend ages poring through every frame in this movie and never run out of moments of visual spectacle to take my breath away.

But it’s the cast that really brings this whole movie together. While the kids are all fairly simple as characters, their interactions with the world and each other take Welcome to the Space Show to a whole new level. It’s so much damn fun watching them work their way through this world, bouncing off each other, marveling at each new setpiece with the same childlike wonder you’re likely feeling yourself. And when it comes time for the dramatic stuff to kick in, it fucking nails it. Natsuki and Amane’s family bond forms the emotional core of this movie, and watching them both struggle to reconnect with each other without knowing how makes for some of the most beautiful stuff in the entire film. Somehow, amid all the crazy visuals and stunning imagery, this simple story of family and friendship in the face of hardship ends up outshining its all. There’s an all-is-lost moment at the end of the second act that ripped my heart out of my chest and left me outright sobbing in my seat. I never expected this movie to hit this hard when I started it, but god damn if it didn’t get its claws into me. And by the time it started heading into the climax, I was fully prepared to call Welcome to the Space Show an outright masterpiece.

So what went wrong? Well, sadly, this movie’s final act is done in by one serious flaw: the plot. Once the movie has to become about the bad guys and their master plan, the story gets completely lost. It introduces big, overcomplicated concepts without adequate buildup, it rushes character relationships that haven’t had time to develop, and it starts throwing so many confusing Proper Nouns at you all at once that I lost track of what was even going on. I still don’t understand the bad guys’ big plan, or how they were trying to accomplish it, or even what their overall ideology was. The final battle tries to set up these big themes involving eugenics and scientific morality and evolution, but it all just boils down to characters yelling random, disconnected philosophy at each other while blasting lasers at each other, and it’s just impossible to follow. There’s still fantastic character moments and stunning animation throughout the big climax, but the more it becomes about that incomprehensible plot, the harder it is to stay invested in what’s going on. It transforms from a truly wonderful adventure flick into a rushed, half-baked storytelling soup that’s crushed under the weight of its own ambition. The fact it actually ends really strong is nothing short of a miracle after how badly this final act drove it off the rails.

And that sucks, because I really wanted to love this movie with all my heart. In a lot of ways, I do! Its best parts are more than worthy of standing beside the best of Miyazaki, Hosoda, Shinkai, and any other legendary director you can namedrop. But that final act really drags it down right when it seemed poise to cement its status as one of the all-time greats. I still highly recommend it, as its strengths are more than enough to make up for its stumbles, and you’re almost guaranteed to have a wonderful time with it. Welcome to the Space Show is a really, really good movie. It’s just not a masterpiece, and the frustration knowing of how close it came to being one is going to stick with me for a long time to come.
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