Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 20, 2012

Don’t be overly concerned if you’re confused as to what is going on in Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere. That confusion will pale compared to how you’ll feel once they actually start explaining things. The first episode of this futuristic quasi-post-apocalpytic fantasy ends with one of the most maddeningly arcane pieces of exposition in recent memory, a furiously rushed “recap” of sorts (even though this is the first episode) that attempts to give the viewer some context even as the credits are scrolling up the screen. Part of this complexity may be attributed to the fact that not only is Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere culled from a light novel series by Minoru Kawakami, the light novel series itself is part of a larger multi-volume franchise that itself consists of several multi-volume arcs. That’s a lot of multi-volumes to pack into one relatively short anime (even if that anime is supposedly based on only one multi-volume light novel series). So let’s try to cut to the chase, as it were, a fitting metaphor since that selfsame first episode of Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere also features a parkour inspired tournament where several student combatants run after their teacher and try to land a hit. The series takes place in a distant future, even though the year is described as 1648 of something called The Testament Era, and (as that hilariously longwinded explanation at the end of the first episode makes clear) some remnants of humankind are (for reasons never really fully revealed) relegated to reliving various tumultuous epochs in human history, including The Thirty Years War (which not so coincidentally took place up until 1648 in our era). What appear to be two different strata of survivors live in what might be termed alternate dimensions, with the series largely concerned with Japanese survivors who now reside aboard a huge spaceship called the Musashi. Some sort of nefarious governmental agency called The Testament Union is in charge of the weird reenactment of history, but kind of like the Mayan calendar which is prophesizing our doom in December of this year, no one seems to know what happens after 1648, which as you might expect is leaving folks in something of a dither. Playing into this general background are the adventures of several teenagers aboard the Musashi, including big man on spaceship campus Aoi Tori, who in the first episode reveals he’s about to propose to a girl named Horizon, which sends everyone into another dither, as Horizon died ten years previously. Clear as mud?

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere is one of those anime that just seems to want to throw as much as possible at the spaceship wall in the hopes that something will stick. We therefore get the sort of shonen antics of Aoi and his classmates, we also get the weird quasi-historical angle courtesy of recreating actual historical events, there’s the dystopian future society angle, the supernatural element with Horizon, and just for good measure, there’s also an admittedly kind of cool high tech ambience that pops up in such accoutrements as virtual screens that various characters are able to summon to access information or communicate with each other.

The series also has a hard time gaining a foothold due to some supposedly comic but kind of unseemly behavior on the part of our putative hero, Aoi. The first episode for example ends with Aoi showing up to the cooing adulation of his classmates only to reveal that he had missed class that day because he was out buying a pornographic videogame. Later in the first season, he’s liable to suddenly interrupt an action sequence to tell Horizon, “I’m sorry I couldn’t make you horny.” While there may not be traditional fan service at hand here, Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere comes precariously close a lot of the time, with a bevy of incredibly buxom girls and Aoi’s constant obsession with sex. There are some other, slightly more unusual elements, though, including some hints at lesbianism and for some heretofore unexplored demographic, a kind of naked looking (though no “naughty bits” are shown) male satanic incubus creature.

The unintentionally hilarious thing about Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere is that it is both spectacularly complex and absolutely ridiculously stupid, usually at the same time. The series does get incrementally more compelling as the first season moves along, but the weird conceit of history being reenacted thrust up against the fan service (in whatever form) and kind of noisy onslaught of teenage shenanigans makes for an extremely uncomfortable fit quite a bit of the time.

The series does have some great action sequences sprinkled liberally throughout this first season, and it's often goofily funny, sometimes almost in spite of itself. Aoi is a typical hormonal young male and his attempts to be suave and sophisticated fail spectacularly, adding some passing humor to this enterprise. But there's also kind of a sweet side to the series at times, too, especially with regard to the frankly bizarre interrelationship between Aoi and Horizon.

Once again, though, Sunrise has delivered a stunningly designed anime that at least offers some really beautiful designs. While the female characters are basically oversized breasts attached to minimal remnants of the rest of their bodies, there is some really nice attention to detail paid to many of the outfits (notice the cool looking filaments surrounding Aoi for a good example) and some of the backgrounds and high tech gizmos that populate each episode are very well done. Those who don’t mind nice looking eye candy gussying up otherwise largely mindless entertainment might find enough in Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere to warrant a look.

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a really beautiful looking anime that pops magnificently in high definition. Line detail is sharp as a tack and colors are gorgeously varied and very deeply saturated. The character designs are quite good for the most part, especially some of the more science fiction tinged ones. Backgrounds are generally very well rendered, though occasionally establishing shots have a sort of soft, Impressionistic look. Some CGI elements are very smartly interwoven into the more traditional cel animation.

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere features two lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes, one in the original Japanese and another English dub. The mixes here are largely similar, though in an unusual change of pace, occasionally some of the sound effects on the Japanese track sound just slightly more boisterous on the Japanese track. Dialogue on both of these tracks is very cleanly presented, and both offer really busy sound design at times, with lots of sound effects and overlapping dialogue cartwheeling over each other. Fidelity is very strong and dynamic range is also quite wide. The series does have some appealing opening and closing themes which also sound great.

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Far East Enlightening Lecture (HD; 5:20) is a chibi hosted that recounts some background material via talking bubbles that have text inside of them.


• Japanese Promos (HD; 1:51)


• Japanese Commercials (HD; 10:07)


• Clean Opening Animation (HD; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animation (HD; 5:03)

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm really not quite sure what I've just seen in Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere. This is one of the oddest amalgamations of ideas and storylines in recent memory, a discomfiting hodgepodge of science fiction, history, fan service, supernaturalism, dystopia and high tech and probably the kitchen sink, too, if you look hard enough. The series has some great action elements and in fact the recreation of history is a really compelling idea that unfortunately is buried beneath a tendency toward typical shonen silliness. One way or the other, it's going to be interesting to see what the second season of this show offers up. As it stands, this is a niche anime, and I frankly can't quite put my finger on what exactly that niche might be. The series does get better as it goes along, and in fact it built up enough interest despite its schizophrenic qualities for me to be looking forward to that second season, so maybe there's something worth seeing in the middle of nowhere if you simply look hard enough for it.