Patema Inverted
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is a 2013
science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
anime film written and directed by Yasuhiro Yoshiura. It was released in Japan on November 9, 2013. A four-episode
original net animation An original net animation (ONA), known in Japan as , is an anime that is directly released onto the Internet. ONAs may also have been aired on television if they were first directly released on the Internet. The name mirrors original video animat ...
(ONA) series, ''Patema Inverted: Beginning of the Day'', streamed in 2012. The film also premiered in the United Kingdom.
Cinedigm Cineverse Corp. (originally Access IT Digital Media, Inc., and later, Cinedigm) is an American entertainment company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Cineverse’s businesses encompass digital cinema, streaming channels, content marketi ...
and
GKIDS GKIDS is an American film and television distributor owned by Toho International. Based in New York City, GKIDS releases mostly international animated films and television series to North American audiences, as well as American films by indepe ...
released the film on
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and
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in North America on November 11, 2014. The film received mainly positive reviews from critics, praising its originality, characters, and plot.


Plot

In 2067, scientists attempt an experiment intended to harness energy from Earth's gravity. However, the experiment fails and gravity reverses, causing nearly everyone and everything to start flying away from Earth. Years later, Patema is a respected teenager who lives in an underground society that imposes rules to keep its members away from "danger zones" that surround the community. Inspired by her friend Lagos, who has mysteriously disappeared, Patema explores the tunnels. One day while exploring, she is startled by a figure that walks on the ceiling and falls into a shaft below. Patema falls outside the fence bordering Aiga. Eiji, another teenager, finds her on the fence. Her gravity is inverted from his. After carrying her safely to the ground, he takes her to a nearby shed, where they learn about each other's worlds. Eiji tells Patema about his father, who supposedly fell from a flying craft while demonstrating it, inspired by what the government dubs the "Inverts". Aiga's controlling leader, Izamura, discovers Patema's presence and orders his troops to capture her. Eiji discovers that by holding Patema, her inverted gravity makes him lighter, reducing the speed at which he falls. They evade the troops, but are soon captured. Eiji is scolded and reprimanded, while Izamura takes Patema to the Control Tower, threatening to release her into the sky. He shows her that he had captured Lagos, who has since died, and imprisons her on the top floor with an inverted weight, with only glass separating her from the sky. Eiji returns to the fence and unexpectedly finds Porta, one of Patema's friends, and is reluctantly brought to the underground. They, along with the society's Elder, devise a plan to free Patema. Eiji and Porta work together, using each other's weights to sneak into the tower by going through its abandoned basement. Eiji enters the top floor alone and frees Patema, but Izamura and numerous forces soon arrive, chasing the two to the roof. Izamura grabs Patema and orders his right-hand man, Jaku, to shoot Eiji. However, Patema jumps off Izamura and grabs Eiji, and they float off into the sky. Izamura then commands that Eiji's "death" be reported as an accident. The unconscious Patema and Eiji awaken as they continue to fly up. As they make it through the clouds, they find that the "sky" is a mechanical ceiling that manufactures Aiga's atmosphere and projects the "stars." They discover Eiji's father's flying machine there. Eiji reads his father's notes, and discovers that he had befriended Lagos and that they both created the floating vehicle. There, Patema and Eiji profess their love and release the inverted weights levitating the craft, allowing it to float steadily back to Aiga. Meanwhile, Jaku, suspicious of Izamura, discovers that he had Eiji's father killed and Lagos captured, specifically to prevent anyone from discovering how small Aiga is. As Izamura finds Jaku, they spot the flying machine falling back down and Izamura orders his troops to capture it. Outside, the flying machine is also witnessed by other students from Eiji’s school, including Kaho, Eiji's closest classmate, who doubts that his "death" was accidental. Her doubts are confirmed when she and students notice Eiji and Patema inside the vehicle. Eiji and Patema jump from the descending vehicle, falling into the shaft leading to Patema's society. The Inverts are glad to see the two alive. However, Izamura and Jaku pursue them in the craft, and Eiji, Patema, and Porta are taken with them as the vehicle falls, eventually crashing to the floor of the shaft. Izamura shoots and wounds Eiji, and attempts to kill Patema, but is thwarted by Porta who knocks away the gun. After drawing a knife to finish Patema, the damaged floor collapses, revealing Earth's true surface: thousands of ruined buildings and open sky, including a ring of debris around the Moon. It is revealed that Aiga and its citizens are actually those who survived the catastrophic experiment, and were living in an artificial world underground that supported their inverted gravity. Floating upward, Izamura desperately holds onto Patema, but loses his grip when the broken craft flies up into him, sending him into the sky. Eiji jumps and grabs onto the falling Patema, and Jaku and the Elder quickly secure the two. Eiji later wakes to discover the surface world. The Elder reads the notes about his son Lagos. He, Porta, and Jaku agree that their worlds should work together now that the truth is known. Patema and Eiji hold on to each other and survey the surface.


Voice cast

Major characters as listed in the closing credits:


Reception

''Patema Inverted'' received positive reviews. The film garnered a 79% approval rating from 14 critics with an
average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...
rating of 5.7 out of 10 on the review aggregation website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
.
Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
provides a score of 66 out of 100 from 8 critics, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Jeannette Catsoulis of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' called the film "delightful" while praising musical score and animation. She also compared ''Patema Inverted'' with a 2012 feature film '' Upside Down'' (which was using similar plot and main theme) but pointed out that "this 'Can we get along?' movie literalizes a physical attraction that acts as a counterargument to the divided worlds' insistence on separation". (''Patema Inverted'' was released as a web anime before ''Upside Down'', and they did not influence each other.) The film won the Audience Award and the Judges Award at the 2013 Scotland Loves Anime. It was also nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Film at the 7th
Asia Pacific Screen Awards The Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) is an international cultural initiative overseen by the Asia Pacific Screen Academy and headquartered in Australia, sometimes called "Asia-Pacific Oscars". In order to realise UNESCO's goals of promoting a ...
.


See also

* ''Head over Heels'' (2012 film) * ''Upside Down'' (2012 film) * ''Relativity'' (M. C. Escher)


References


External links

*
Patema Inverted: Beginning of the Day
on
Niconico , known before 2012 as , is a Japanese video sharing service based in Tokyo, Japan. "Niconico" or "nikoniko" is the Japanese sound symbolism, Japanese ideophone for smiling. As of 2021, Niconico is the 34th most-visited website in Japan, accordi ...
* *
''Patema Inverted''
on All the Anime {{Authority control 2013 fantasy films 2013 anime films 2013 films 2012 anime ONAs Dystopian films Films directed by Yasuhiro Yoshiura Films scored by Michiru Ōshima Japanese animated fantasy films Japanese animated science fiction films