Yoshiura is back after his magnum opus, Time of Eve. How does his new movie stack up? Better than good. Brilliant, actually.

The entire movie hinges on the concept of being upside down. The camera does interesting tricks at certain scenes that will make your head hurt. You start to wonder who is actually right side up and who is actually inverted. The world building is excellent, albeit a bit subtle. Similar to his previous work Pale Cocoon, Yoshiura sprinkles hints throughout the film in the form of cuts, pans, and background notes that really flesh out the characters and their motivations.

Yoshiura kept the simple character art style from Time of Eve, which may look jarring when compared to the intricate and detailed backgrounds. However, the character art is pleasing to the eye and does not distract from the overall enjoyability of the film. The backgrounds are where the movie truly shines. I enjoyed the beautiful skies, claustrophobic mine shafts, and the appropriately designed dystopian society - with even a giant panopticon thrown in for good measure. The camera work is superb, especially during the scenes where Age and Patema cling onto each other and the camera pans from the side to behind them. You really get the sense that they are really flying (or maybe floating is a better word). The situations where gravity comes at play never breaks the rules set inside the setting.

With just over 90 minutes to work with, I expected Yoshiura to return to the peppery fast dialogue that made Time of Eve so much fun to watch. This is some of that, but Yoshiura decided to go for a more subtle approach, utilizing silence and a "show-not-tell" way to great effect. Like in Pale Cocoon, you know just enough about each character and their motivations so that you care deeply for what happens to them. Age and Patema are great together and have great chemistry, but I found myself caring more about the relationship between Lagos and Age's father. However, that's not to say that both relationships don't compliment each other. Yoshiura is awesome at connecting them together, as he did so brilliantly in Time of Eve.

There is one glaring weakness in this movie, which was also present in Time of Eve. Yoshiura cannot write engaging antagonists. In this film, the antagonist's ambitions are a bit trite and cliched, and his motivations aren't made exactly clear. He has the "bad guy who is bad because he is bad" syndrome.

But other than that, I loved the movie. I loved each and every twist and turn. I loved the climax, the great reveal. I loved how Yoshiura (to the most part) stuck to what he does best - world building, dialogues filled with zingers, and toying with our emotions. The voice acting is nice, the music is superb (Ico, anyone?). If you loved Yoshiura's previous works you will not be disappointed.

I think another reviewer complains about how there are plot holes. There are none, I assure you. You just have to think about each scene carefully. Everything makes sense.