Beyond the Boundary Movie: I'll Be Here - The Past

When I found out that this first part of a two-part movie project is actually just a retread of what happened in the 2013 anime series Beyond the Boundary, I was not too keen on the idea. However, given the fact that the second part, Beyond the Boundary Movie: I'll Be Here - The Future, has also already been released, I figured I would watch both of the two parts (they were released at around the same time). Certainly, squeezing a twelve-episode anime series narrative into an hour and a half is not really possible, and it is clear that the anime's creators had to do some extreme editing. Fortunately, in my opinion, they were quite successful and only picked out the highlights. So they rehashed what happened in the anime series, and my final impression is essentially the same. I liked the two main protagonists, especially Mirai, whom I liked very much. I enjoyed the mysterious and rather original narrative, and I liked the rather good, in my opinion, love story element. I also remembered that I had been put off from giving it a full rating back in 2013 by the not-so-great ending and especially the very end, which serves tries to bring everything to a head emotionally. So I was again slightly put off by the conclusion of this movie. Anyway, the soundtrack and animation are good, and I thought the movie adaptation of Beyond the Boundary was simply above average. 7/10. (10/11/2015)