Patema Inverted

Patema Inverted
230px Japanese DVD cover art
サカサマのパテマ (Sakasama no Patema)
Genre	Fantasy
Original net animation
Patema Inverted: Beginning of the Day
Directed by	Yasuhiro Yoshiura
Written by	Yasuhiro Yoshiura
Studio	Purple Cow Studios Japan
Released	February 26, 2012 – August 25, 2012
Runtime	6 minutes
Episodes	4
Anime film
Directed by	Yasuhiro Yoshiura
Written by	Yasuhiro Yoshiura
Music by	Michiru Ōshima
Studio	Purple Cow Studios Japan
Licensed by	NA Cinedigm/GKIDS UK Anime Limited
Released	November 9, 2013 (2013-11-09)
Runtime	99 minutes

Patema Inverted (サカサマのパテマ, Sakasama no Patema) is a 2013 Japanese anime science fiction film by Yasuhiro Yoshiura. It was released in Japan on November 9, 2013. A four-episode ONA series, Patema Inverted: Beginning of the Day, streamed in 2012. The film was also shown in the UK. Cinedigm released the film on Blu-ray and DVD in North America on November 11, 2014.

Plot

In the near future, scientists attempt to harness Earth's gravity for energy. The experiment fails and results in the devastation of much of the surface: nearly everyone and everything is thrown into a reverse gravity field and sent flying from Earth. Patema is a respected teenage girl who lives in a society that dwells underground. The subterranean community imposes rules to keep its members away from "danger zones" in the tunnels that surround the community. Inspired by her friend Lagos, who has mysteriously disappeared, Patema explores the tunnels. One day, while looking at a large, seemingly bottomless hole, she is startled by a figure that appears to walk on the ceiling, and she falls into the pit.

In the totalitarian nation of Aiga, founded to protect its citizens from "danger zones" that were created by the failed experiment, Patema falls out into the wide open world above the surface. A teenage boy named Age living there, has been traumatized for some time after watching his father suffer a fatal accident while attempting to demonstrate a flying machine, and desires to continue his father's dream. While gazing at the night sky near a fence surrounding Aiga, he hears a noise to find Patema there, whose gravity is inverted from his. Aiga is a place with reversed physics, where if Patema let go, she would "fall up" into the sky. After helping her safely to the ground with his weight, he takes her to a nearby shed, where they learn about each other's worlds.

Aiga's leader Izamura, who sees the failed experiment and the "Inverts" (those who suffer from inverted gravity) as a sin, wants to eliminate them. When he discovers Patema's presence by numerous security cameras, he has his troops capture Patema and Age. Age discovers that by the two gripping each other, Patema's inverted gravity makes him much lighter, reducing the speed at which he falls. He suggests using this to help return Patema to her people. Evading the troops, the two are captured. Age is scolded and reprimanded, while Izamura takes Patema to his giant governing tower, threatening to release her into the sky, and shows her that he had previously captured another Invert, Lagos, who has long since died. He imprisons her in the top floor, with only a plate of glass between her and the sky should she "fall".

Age returns to the place where he met Patema, and is surprised to find Porta, one of Patema's friends, coming up to find her. Age goes with Porta to the underground tunnels, finding himself an Invert among those people. They, along with the society's Elder, devise a plan to free Patema. Age and Porta work together, using the same means of each other's weights to offset gravity, to sneak into the tower by going through its abandoned basement. Age 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 Age. Jaku hesitates, then Patema instead jumps off Izamura, grabs Age, and the two float off into the sky because of Patema's inverted weight tied to her leg. Izamura then orders to have Age's death reported as an accident.

Age and Patema continue to fly up, but as they make it through the clouds, they find that the "sky" appears to be a mechanical creation that projects the appearance of stars for Aiga. They discover Age's father's flying machine having "fallen" to the sky. Age reads his father's notes, learning that he had met Lagos, and together they worked to create the flying machine. After spending the night, the mechanical sky is now lit like the sun, and they release the weights that had given the craft buoyancy, letting it float steadily back to Aiga. Meanwhile, Jaku is suspicious of Izamura's orders, and discovers that Izamura had Age's father killed, specifically to prevent anyone from discovering how small Aiga is. As Izamura finds Jaku's snooping, they spot the flying machine falling back to the ground. Kaho, Age's classmate who believed in him and doubts that his "death" was accidental, and others witness the flying machine, and Izamura orders his troops to capture it.

Age and Patema jump from the flying craft, their negating weight allows them to drift into the large hole that Patema originally fell out of. The underground residents are glad to see the two alive. However, Izamura and Jaku follow in the flying craft, which ends up falling to the floor of the large shaft. Izamura shoots and wounds Age, and then attempts to kill Patema when Porta arrives, knocking away the gun and a knife before he loses his grip and falls up the shaft. The floor of the shaft shatters, revealing sky below it. Izamura grabs Patema as he falls into the sky, and see thousands of ruins of buildings around and truly open sky, including a ring of debris around the Moon; it is revealed that it is Aiga and its citizens are those that actually survived the catastrophic incident despite their gravity being inverted, and were living in an artificial world and sky underground which supported this inverted gravity.

Izamura loses his grip on Patema when the remains of the flying craft fall onto him, sending him into the sky lost forever. Age jumps and grabs onto Patema, and Jaku and the Elder who had saved Porta, quickly secure the two from falling either way. Age wakes to discover the true situation, while the Elder reads the notes about his son Lagos, and Jaku agree that their worlds should work together now the truth is known. As Age had helped Patema, Patema holds onto Age while they explore the surface.

Voice cast

Major characters as listed in the closing credits:

Character	Japanese voice actor	English voice actor
Patema (パテマ, Patema)	Yukiyo Fujii	Cassandra Lee Morris
Age (エイジ, Eiji)	Nobuhiko Okamoto	Michael Sinterniklaas
Porta (ポルタ, Poruta)	Shintaro Ohata	Robbie Daymond
G (Elder) (ジィ, Ji)	Shinya Fukumatsu	Bill Lader
Lagos (ラゴス, Ragosu)	Masayuki Kato	Chris Niosi
Jaku (ジャク, Jaku)	Hiroki Yasumoto	Patrick Seitz
Kaho (カホ, Kaho)	Maaya Uchida	Stephanie Sheh
Izamura (イザムラ, Izamura)	Takaya Hashi	Richard Epcar

Reception

Patema Inverted received mostly positive reviews. The film garnered a 79% approval rating from 14 critics—an average rating of 5.7 out of 10—on the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic provides a score of 66 out of 100 from 8 critics, which indicates "generally favorable" reviews.

Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times called the film "delightful" and also praised the musical score and the "soft and imaginatively detailed" animation. She also compared Patema Inverted with a 2012 feature film Upside Down (which was using similar plot and main theme) but pointed that "this 'Can we get along?' movie literalizes a physical attraction that acts as a counterargument to the divided worlds' insistence on separation".

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 Feature Film at the 7th Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

See also

• List of animated feature films of 2013

External links

• Official website (Japanese)
• Patema Inverted: Beginning of the Day on Niconico (Japanese)
• Patema Inverted at IMDb
• Patema Inverted (film) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Patema Inverted on All the Anime