Patema Inverted Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Patema Inverted Blu-ray Movie Review

Upside Down: The Anime.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 3, 2014

Have you ever seen Juan Diego Solanas and Yasuhiro Yoshiura together? I thought not. Of course there’s a very good chance that very few reading this review have ever even heard of either Solanas or Yoshiura, so the probability remains that actually identifying either or both of them by sight remains minimal at best. This (mostly) rhetorical question is meant solely to highlight the fact that these two disparate filmmakers, one born in 1966 in Argentina (Solanas) and the other in 1980 in Japan (Yoshiura) evidently independently arrived at a “high concept” (as well as a “low concept,” actually) for a film and released them within months of each other (in Yoshiura's case, with a set of OVAs that presaged this feature film). While it’s true that Solanas’ Upside Down 3D was a live action outing and Yoshiura’s Patema Inverted a piece of animation, there are startling similarities between the two properties. Both films posit a world split into two societies, one above the each other, where each world’s gravity pulls in the opposite direction from the other. The upper world is graced with high tech wonderment and a general sense of well being, if also a somewhat fascistic government presence. The society below is haggard and decrepit, existing in a kind of Steampunk ambience that is decidedly retro and secondhand. Bridging that seemingly insurmountable gap is both an immense structure that joins the two worlds, as well as a young couple, one from each world, who meet when one “falls” (up) into the foreign environment. In Upside Down, it’s a young boy who penetrates the upper world, while in Patema Inverted it’s young lower world princess Patema, but otherwise both films share some baseline elements which are identical enough to make some whimsically muse whether the two writer-directors are in fact the same person masquerading as two people.

In a subterranean environment filled with huge cavernous rooms stuffed with pipes and other mechanical looking items, little Patema is eager to explore areas like a so-called Danger Zone that are supposedly off limits to those of her kind. Patema is perhaps given a bit of a wider berth than most since she’s evidently royalty, though this aspect (as with many others in the film) is never really fully explained nor developed very well. One day while tooling around a kind of spooky looking region, Patema is frightened by a red eyed creature she calls a Bat Person (since it’s hanging upside down from the ceiling like the nocturnal mammal), an individual who seems intent on harming her. When she attempts to run away, she ends up falling—up. That then leads to her adventures above ground, in a world that has only been described to her by her long missing friend Lagos (who might actually be her older brother—again, the film is decidedly discursive with some of its narrative elements).

Patema luckily collides first with a chain link fence and then a young boy named Age, who holds on to her and keeps her from flying into the netherworld of the sky, since Patema’s gravity pulls her up instead of down. Age is part of a totalitarian society which is rigidly controlled and which considers “inverts” like Patema inveterate “sinners” who are punished by being sucked skyward to their deaths. There are some hints at a more fulsome mythology here, but Yoshiura is mostly content to simply leave them as hints, rather than developing things more completely.

Much as Patema has been pining over the missing Lagos, so has Age been angst ridden over the disappearance of his father, a man who bolted against authority and tried to fly into the sky to explore, vanishing in the process. While Patema Inverted actually does provide a few answers with regard to both of these characters (frankly more so with regard to Lagos than with Age’s father), once again many salient questions are left unanswered by the film’s end, something that deprives any potential emotional content from ever really hitting home.

Patema Inverted therefore feels oddly disjointed at times, as if huge swaths of the story were left on the cutting room floor (or ceiling, as the case may be, considering this film's polar opposite gravitational systems). What’s left is often visually arresting, though the odd positions that Patema and Age utilize to cling to each other may cause some unexpected giggles in the more salaciously minded. There are a number of hugely intriguing aspects to this anime, but Yoshiura either wasn’t interested in or was otherwise unable to prop them up sufficiently. What exactly was the disaster that caused this gravitational anomaly? What actually happened to the “underlings” who were pulled into the sky? What’s the story with the tyrannical leader of the above ground society? What did the exploring tendencies of Lagos and Age’s father actually achieve? Why are romantic entanglements hinted at for Patema (in terms of Porta, a boy from her society) and Age (for an unnamed girl in his society), without ever being really explicitly dealt with? These are just a smattering of unresolved issues, but they at least give some indication of how much is left unexplained. The most salient question of all is how are Patema and Age going to get to “happily ever after” if they’re always clinging to each other’s midriffs? Maybe that’s a question that’s actually better left unanswered.

Patema Inverted Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Patema Inverted is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm and GKids with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While this is a sharp and clear looking transfer, the palette is often a bit tamped down on the upper world especially, leaving only individual elements like a bright blue sky to pop with any immediacy. Some of the baroque detail in the underground lair is actually more visually impressive, offering a wealth of hues and some beautiful depth. Line detail is very sharp and stable, and contrast is very well dialed in throughout the presentation. Occasionally Yoshiura tweaks the image to indicate things like flashbacks (see screenshot 8), and those sequences are intentionally softer looking (to the point of being out of focus) than the bulk of the film. There are some minor transitory banding issues in evidence, but otherwise this is a really nice looking anime that plays with perspective and ideas of up and down quite winningly.

Patema Inverted Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Patema Inverted offers DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes in both the original Japanese and an English dub. There's quite a bit of range in the voice casts and fans may want to check each of them out for their differences. The mixes are virtually identical other than the voice work, offering clear fidelity and good placement of sound effects throughout the surrounds. Dialogue is always cleanly presented, and there are occasional uses of LFE that help to deliver a robust sonic presentation. Finally, there are no issues of any kind to report.

Patema Inverted Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Producer and Voice Cast is with the Japanese producer and voice cast, with English subtitles. While occasionally informative, this sounds like more of a reunion get together and therefore resembles some of the more raucous "party hearty" pieces that sometimes accompany FUNimation releases.


• Interview with Director Yasuhiro Yoshiura (1080i; 5:18) offers a few nuggets about the production, including the fact that some of Yoshiura's friends were patently confused by the concept.


• Interviews with Voice Cast (1080i; 6:00) offers a look at some of the Japanese cast.


• At the Premiere with Director and Voice Cast (1080i; 15:04)


• U.S. Trailer (1080p; 1:47)

Patema Inverted Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Perhaps because it hadn't been that long since I watched Upside Down, I was repeatedly struck by how similar this offering is to that film. But Upside Down had a surer grasp on its narrative flow, as well as a more determined effort to provide enough context and information to the viewer so that everything made sense. Patema Inverted is a bit haphazard in this regard, and my hunch is most viewers are going to have a laundry list of largely (or at least inadequately) unanswered questions by the film's end. Often visually compelling, Patema Inverted would have benefited immensely from more development and backstory. It's regularly intriguing but never emotionally cogent. Still, for those wanting a bit of an unusual tale that might be considered a gravitational Romeo and Juliet, Patema Inverted probably offers enough to warrant it being Recommended.