Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
in_situ
Happiness or truth?
Alongside Genocidal Organ and Empire of Corpses this is another anime based upon Project Itoh's novel. I now think that this man's influence on anime is to be reckoned with, even though he had nothing to do with the industry directly.
This time it plays out like a cerebral sci-fi, highly philosophical, slow-burning and pondering. 2 hours sharp of reflections about the nature of free will, the meaning of conscience for a human, the dangers of conformism, the Weltschmerz tied to anyone bound by higher enlightenment and how the greater knowledge is incomparable with feeling of happiness. Think The Brave New World if it wasn't trying to be cinematic as Equilibrium, although this is a beautiful anime. It mixes 2D with striking architecture and authentic coding interfaces,…
Read at the sourceshirogane_kei9
Harmony is an anime film adapted from Project Itoh’s novel, and from the very beginning it’s clear this isn’t a light watch. The story is set in a future where humanity has built a so-called utopia disease is eradicated, people live healthy, peaceful, and harmonious lives. But behind that “perfection,” the film asks: is a life without conflict truly a life worth living?
Story-wise, the strongest part for me is in Tuan Kirie’s inner conflict and her relationship with Miach. Miach, as someone who rejects the utopian system, becomes a catalyst for the film’s core philosophical question: if suffering is erased, are we still human? That gives the movie a heavy existential weight.
That said, here’s where the weaknesses kick in. The pacing can feel slow,
and the dialogues are often long and hea…
Read at the sourceDykeViews
If you stumbled across this looking for WLW content, just go ahead and watch it. The lesbian relationship is explicit without comphet or male pandering. No sexualization of minors -- a few flashbacks to when the main characters were in highschool, but no out-of-place fanservice. It's a jet-setting action movie with secret societies, dystopian/utopian commentary, and themes on human nature. It's an enjoyable piece to keep in your collection of WLW content that isn't slice-of-life or high-school-based. Not going to win awards on originality. It tries to do a lot, and succeeds about as much as any major blockbuster does. I'll watch again to pass time but not to resolve unexplained mysteries or because I was on the edge of my chair.
Read at the sourcestopthisregbs
This anime is very relevant for today in the age of global pandemic and, in my opinion, it presents a logical model for the future society, in which death would be a curable decease and, as a result, human death and potential instability from it would be the ultimate central problem of society.
The social system and technocratic centralisation envisioned would definitely not be the only way a society could organise itself based on an ultimate value and veneration of life, and the film is a bit pessimistic, focusing on risks and not the perfection - it's a shame that authors showed the future of not aging as a dystopia, while it definitely could be made a real utopia, if human freedoms were really respected. Such a movie would be much more beneficial and a breakthrough, even a compass for…
Read at the sourceSairenn
Its still riddles me why this movie got somewhat a bad review on plain sight its really just a normal movie talking and Wandering About a Dystopia World Where there reside 3 character that is planning a Suicide Attempt just because The Idea of Dystopia itself, While it is quite boring it got me hooked for a while chewing through all of the information given and questioning everything in the movie probably gives the most fun out of it.
Story was meh pretty common with its own twist
Art was at some Degree Pleasing
Sound Was well how would i say unique
Character Was very good in my perspective
Overall Definitely Would Recommend To a person who likes to Overthinking
Read at the sourcepacmanyo
I loved thee, though I told thee not,
Right earlily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song.
And when I saw a stranger face
Where beauty held the claim,
I gave it like a secret grace
The being of thy name. And all the charms of face or voice
Which I in others see
Are but the recollected choice
Of what I felt for thee.
An anime which asks hard questions while also presenting a story of passion, love, hate and selfishness. The melancholy tone permeating every moment of the movie is constantly reinforced by the pessimistic outlook of the main characters, colour and music choices. While low on action the movie keeps you engaged with constant change of beautiful scenery, character expressions/mannerisms and great dialog. While in certain scenes CG can look a bit dated…
Read at the sourcesobbingmusouka
I rolled for a random anime and watched this movie with no idea what was in store.
Turned out to be a sci-fi psychological thriller. Personally, it's immediately up with Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass, Serial Experiments Lain, Last Exile, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. All of these being shows I thoroughly enjoy for their focus on existentialist themes and their characters.
The deeper you go in, the more surreal and philosophical it gets. The writing for this movie doesn't pull punches to make the audience feel good. This is also going on my personal list of classic Tragedy Yuri right alongside Shiroiheya no Futari.
The film depicts suicide and mentions rape heavily just as a warning.
FULL REVIEW
Short ver:
If you don't like heavily psychological anime with elaborate dialogue and a focu…
Read at the sourcektulu007
Next up for this year's festival is Harmony. Not to be confused with the Harmonie I reviewed three years ago. This one is based off of a novel by sci-fi writer Itou Satoshi aka Project Itoh aka Itou Keikaku aka Uncle Itou Stardust. I may have made one of those up. The film version was handled by Studio 4° C. Which you may remember as the Tekkon Kinkreet guys. Which is not a good sign. But let's see what Uncle Itou Stardust can do. Maybe it's good.
Story:
We open with a strange, pulsating room with a pillar that looks a bit like something from 2001, the film not the year. We cut to a group of peace keepers making a deal with a militant group for alcohol and tobacco. Their leader is a woman named Tuan. She's sent back to utopian future Japan to consider her actions. Then things go wrong a…
Read at the sourceAtonement_Andy
Light Spoilers warning.
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Harmony is a decent dystopian movie from the novel with the same name written by Itoh Project.There are appealing art scenes,coherent story line and intriguing characters.However,there are also obvious flaws or even failures.
As for art presentation,there are amazing scenes like when Cian commited suicide ,or those absurd skyscrapers attempting to present the idea of 'supremacy of life' and permeate the sense of anxiety of this 'Utopia' bordering on collapse.However,the overall immoderate 3D paintings are tiresome and kind of disruptive from my personal perspective.
I love the OSTs.The background music is beautiful and mysterious,following how the story goes.It can be serene and soft,but also dramatically tragic when i…
Read at the sourcemrbeckham09
Harmony (movie)
The future may be filled with auto-driving cars, medical robots that instantly understand your biological crisis, and an AI monitoring system that always knows what your up to, but it will never foresee the terrorism attempts of a highly skilled hacker unit created by three high school girls. Or at least originating from their bonds together.
This is totally a futuristic, sci-fi like anime with MAJOR DILEMMAS. When I say dilemma, I'm not referring to lite drama that you might find within a typical set of high school students. This anime opens up to a future created from the repercussions of their pasts. It is about someone who wants to rule the world, someone who wants to save the world, and someone who bears the initial brunt of the consequences.
This movie might be st…
Read at the sourceThedude3445
Post-apocalypse in the Google era. Sleek white curves, faint smiling faces, and blood-red warmth. Sit back and let the servers do the work for you.
On its face, it's just a spy movie, something like Thunderball Meets Spectre with a bit of Blade Runner. An expert investigator delves into a world-threatening plot and uncovers a plot with some personal stakes involved. But the movie focuses almost entirely on those personal stakes, and the investigation, the thriller plot, is put on the backburner, which is for the best seeing as how utterly simple it is.
Instead, this is the story of one woman, Tuan Kirie, living in a peaceful utopia, one she hates. It's the ultimate battle of the individual versus the collective, and she is trapped in a life she didn't mean to lead, forced to leave behin…
Read at the sourceIts-Maki-kun
Two words to describe this anime. NICE SAFE. Yes, to be honest this anime suffers a lot on the story writing and they managed to safe the whole story by that one final dialogue between Tuan and Miach. The very last dialogue just made me chill down my spines as I sympathized with Miach while feeling horror at the same time. Lured by the theme song by EGOIST, I watched this anime as soon it landed on our local streaming site. While the ending was thrilling, the ride towards there is not so much enjoyable.
As I said before, this anime suffers a lot on the story writing. This is caused by many coincidences thrown into the story and sometimes unmentioned plot suddenly appeared just to continue the story. One example is the story of Tuan's father that they did not mention until it was in the ve…
Read at the sourceRachoyu
the plot that me understands and go to construe come out
about [ story ] this get into trouble at tell change something the memory of the protagonist , Kirie , in back world drains in a sieve something , that get meet meet with , Mihie , by the life in the childhood of , Mihie , touch [ cheap ] kidnap by a soldier who go to trespass a village where her lives , in 8 a year , at that far people let's village has to wedding under the relative , make a child who give birth to come to inferior crippled way brain intelligence , after , , Mihie , kidnaped come to , touch [ cheap ] the hand rapes repeatedly , poverty , Mihie , get recover be conscious come back be after , lose feeling temper in the place where her was taken come to , she then exceed the wrath that will want life period takes of…
Read at the source01Sharjeel
*THIS REVIEW MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS*(Well sort of but no big spoilers that would ruin your show or anything I am just highlighting the parts I like/dislike)
Before anyone get under the influence that I am gonna be praising the hell out of this show know this according to me 7-8/10 means average rating. I mean my average score is 8.1something. A 8 means it had a lot of flaws but I somehow ended up enjoying it. So without further ado let's get into this.
Harmony is set in a world which is absolutely perfect. No pain/suffering and everyone lives freely and everyone seems to like it that way except for our two Main characters who refused to accept this perfect society. And one of them is absolutely determined to change the world. Now with that it's obvious that this will going to be a movi…
Read at the sourceCaninnTurtle
(Warning: I go pretty deep into spoilers here, so be warned. If you want a spoiler-free tl;dr: Yes, it's excellent, just don't expect a lot of action, but a lot of world building and exposition.)
Harmony leaves you with a certain emptiness after completion. Not the kind of feel good emptiness, where you're just sad the ride is over and just want to continue the adventure, but a kind of sinking emptiness. The kind that makes you stop and just think about the reasoning behind the character's actions. In Harmony's case, you're left considering that, maybe, living in utopia can be a special kind of hell. It follows that really intriguing line of thought throughout the entire movie, providing numerous examples where you are left to decide if you empathize with the trio's dream to overthrow the…
Read at the sourcePsyrhos
Harmony is an... odd movie.
Beautiful and yet jarring.
The visuals are based on artwork by Redjuice (who I personally love) and it shows. Everything looks clean and Sci-Fi. Sometimes it felt like the designs would have worked far better as still images rather than animation.
Using CG in this setting fits pretty well since it makes it feel otherworldly. This CG, however, can also often and easily feel so out of place it's jarring. The by far best looking shot ever is already revealed during the trailer(s) and appears in the movie during the first quarter. Everything after it just doesn't live up to it visually.
Interesting and yet boring.
The characters are by far the biggest flaw in Harmony.
This might not be too much of a problem if Harmony wasn't so character driven. It completel…
Read at the sourceRunningShirtGuy
TRIGGER WARNING FOR HARMONY: Many suicides are shown on screen, rape is discussed in relative detail
Story (1/10): The story was comprised of the MC being info-dumped by everyone, even if the person giving the information isn't doing it out of their own interest. The story uses suicide as a plot device, pretending (at the same time) that it is both poetic, and a casual part of life. In reality, suicide is neither of those things. Harmony comments how books can cause suicide imitations if the suicide is described in detail, yet has no problem whatsoever showing full suicide scenes within the movie. Harmony's plot itself is also flawed, as it starts out as a utopia with problems, but it cant decide whether it wants to be Orwellian or Huxleyian. If it had chosen one (or neither) this would n…
Read at the sourceZerity
Story: The story for Harmony at least for me was confusing (without thinking) after I thought about everything throughout the movie and then after to make sense of anything I finally understood most of it if not all. It's a very beautiful story and the telling of it was very well done.
Art: Holy, the art in this anime is insane. It's the best animation I have ever seen. the movement of the characters and backgrounds (especially in the finally clips) is so beautiful and I love it. One of the best things about it is the animation.
Sound: Not much to say about this it was good in general nothing really great. The music was fine but nothing more.
Character: Tuan really changes throughout the movie. With a lot of emotional conflict she goes through and the choices she makes changes her, I t…
Read at the sourceEmiliaHoarfrost
Harmony, an interesting anime movie with two themes I am nowhere from familiar with : psychological, and science-fiction. Hencefore, this movie will perhaps divide, sometimes make you ponder, or won't reach you. To me, it evocated meanings for me, but I certainly am on the common of developped humanity, so notions that were thought complicated will become such in my mind. Will you hang with me as I will tempt to criticize this movie?
Should I warn you of spoiler in before, that I dare not judge, but you are reading under your own will.
Story (8) :
From the start, an etablished utopic world ; which could very well become somehow true (to an extent, but with the expansion of the numeric era on societies, it wouldn't be hundred percent optimist to advance quite the opinion), is settled as b…
Read at the sourcetinyXL
Today's ScruTiny: Harmony the Movie.
- A Lesbo-erotic, Dys-Utopian Sci-Fi future with Above average Animation.
- Featuring Sci-Fi Society staples like:
- Governments controlling people through near-forced "suggestions" using a built-in device (refer: Psycho Pass).
- Main characters dissatisfied by their "perfect" society so they rebel by sending "a message" ... through self harm. - The "Visionary Villainette" aiming to rid the world of the human darkness which led to her existence so it never happens to anyone else.
- Well drawn Art , i.e. the main characters look cool and are shown as accomplished pros in their field. Which is good because what's behind the drawings are bland and without personality. Also Has locales outside of Japan, mainly Arabian but outside of a few set piece…
Read at the source
