In this charming and ingeniously elaborate anime world one tribe’s gravity is another tribe’s anti-gravity. A plucky upside-down girl and a gallant right-way-up boy switch perspectives.
An engaging and nicely complex and challenging film, Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s anime manages to be both exciting and charming.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2014
Patema Inverted 2013
Sakasama no Patema
“After the interstellar disorientations of Gravity, here’s an anime which mucks with up and down. Patema, a perky teen girl, lives in a post-disaster underground world. During her explorations, she falls into a chasm and ends up on the surface. The snag is, it’s an upside-down surface, with upside-down people, where she’s always in great danger of plunging into the sky. Luckily, Patema’s helped by a surface boy her age (confusingly called Age). He hates his oppressive society, which teaches that ‘Invert’ people like Patema are subhuman sinners. The adventures which follow will flip both their perspectives. Patema Inverted is a highly likeable mix of simplicity and sophistication, a sci-fi ‘conceptual breakthrough’ yarn where a boy can fall for an upside-down girl.” — Andrew Osmond, SFX. “The themes (rebellion, prejudice...) and panto villains lapse into broad strokes, but Yoshiura’s world-building doesn’t: from the texture of the underground havens to the idea that our leads have to – literally – cling to each other lest gravity tears them apart, it’s a wonder of detail and ingenuity.” — Kevin Harley, Total Film