There are two types of films I find frustrating to talk about. The first are films that almost made me cry. It's one thing to discuss a bad movie that was mean-spirited or arrogant, because then I have no reservations about riffing on it. But when something doesn't hit me after wearing its heart on its sleeve, I feel like a jerk instead. The second type is films that barely explore their own premise. If something fantastical is what makes your story pitch stand out, don't make what you sold the movie on feel like an afterthought. To You in the Beyond is both of these films. It's a coming-of-age story set on the seaside between a couple who happen to be 52 years apart. Not in age, though: she just dropped in from the 70s.

Scriptwriter Akiko Abe, the creator of Ao Haru Ride, is no stranger to exploring teenage social anxiety. While neither is outright reclusive, both stories follow protagonists who in some way self-isolate to protect themselves. In Ao Haru Ride, it was Futaba denying her own femininity to avoid being targeted out of jealousy. For this film, it's Kazuki denying his talent as a pianist after a triggering incident in the city. But while Futaba was holding herself back to fit in at school, Kazuki wanted to keep running from his past, even if it meant leaving his friends behind. It doesn't matter that most of them think well of him: knowing where he came from could change everything. So it makes sense why he'd open up to Nanao: she's not even from his time period.

Despite being born and raised there, Nanao feels more like an outsider than Kazuki at first. Her old home is in ruins, and everyone she once knew no longer lives there. While she's initially overwhelmed, Kazuki's many talks with her reveal a much more fiery personality. The voice actress Anna Nagase revealed that she read this book back in middle school and has been aiming to voice this character ever since. So, coming off her performance as Akane Osaki (Akane-banashi), I was at first shocked by how timid she was. That all changed when Nanao finally met Kazuki, the pianist. The light in her eyes sparkled with an innocent wonder he hadn't experienced in years. She may have lost everything, but that hasn't stopped her from finding new things to get excited about. There's a particular talk at dinner later in the movie where the real Nanao comes out, and her rambunctious energy is infectious.

On paper, I understand the appeal here because of movies like your name.. Everyone can relate to meeting someone new to your neighborhood, but what if you were separated by time as well? It's a natural escalation to exploring long-distance relationships. But your name.'s time travel wasn't just there for themes and such: it was the driving force of the 2nd half of its story. There's an old saying that no element in a story should be unnecessary. If a gun is shown, it must be fired by the end of the story. Yes, I'm quoting the definition of Chekhov's gun.

But sometimes, no one will care even if the gun is fired. If it's too apparent that the gun was left there to be fired and barely acknowledged for most of the story, it can come off as cheap and forced. That's how time travel feels here: it is there to add flavor to the romance and nothing more. Aside from Nanao's taste in food and music, her feeling like Kazuki's grandma, and her coming from 1974, they play little point in the story it wants to tell. The film seems more interested in discussing cancel culture and the significance of Noah's Ark to someone who'd rather drown with the world they cursed.

The reason this bothers me is that midway through the film, they reveal something game-changing: that people have visited this timeline for decades. It's implied in the film that the entire town was shaped by people who drifted from both the past and the future. Communities were built from their hard work, and whether they chose to stay or return home was up to them. That is too meaty a premise not to dig into. What if a peasant from the Sengoku era formed a thriving farmers' market? What if a fortune teller knew which horse to bet on for 50 years? Is one of Kazuki's classmates secretly an android? Would these have led to a fundamentally different story? Perhaps, but why bother writing a time-travel story if you're barely going to have time travel at all? If the romance is strong enough, don't complicate it with something fantastical. You can't just mention that a character really came from 2096 without mentioning whether we get flying cars yet.

It's a shame because the side characters in this actually showed promise. There's a good amount of small-town camaraderie present throughout the whole feature. Nanao's adoptive uncle, Takatsu, was full of surprises as a performative deadbeat, hiding a caring artist whom only the teacher at their school truly knows. Kazuki's dorm mates were simultaneously his ball-busters and wingmen in ways that good friends should be. One of them, in particular, played a huge part in his past that explains why he was his biggest defender for life. That said, one classmate's turn to the dark side is so cartoonishly evil that it made a huge chunk of the climax hard to take seriously. This isn't the kind of story that really needed a bad guy, but then again, it didn't really need time travel either.

On the production side, the film is surprisingly toned down compared to Director Junichi Wada's television series. While the hand-drawn backgrounds capture the countryside setting quite well, the shot composition and color palette aren't as striking or as energetic as those of Sakugan or High Card. That said, the character animation is consistent in ways only a feature film can afford. The piano performances by Kazuki are drawn without CG hands: a feat even the arguably more inventive Blue Giant struggled with.

The music outside of these piano performances isn't particularly memorable. Kōji Nakamura's score doesn't really take advantage of his experience as the guitarist for SUPERCAR. The attempts to be cinematic instead feel like the temp score to a Ghibli or Shinkai film. The ending song by Tota is nice, but I wish we got one more piano performance first.

At the premiere during Anime Expo, the director mentioned they plan to tweak the editing a bit before its theatrical release 3 months later. Maybe a snappier cut will help somewhat, but it can't change the story's direction altogether. Considering how beloved the novel is, maybe it won't need to. There's a chance this will find its audience the same way it did for its lead actress and director. For me, though, I kept wondering how this story would look from a different character's perspective. Somewhere beyond the story being told is a more interesting movie happening off-screen. Maybe a sequel starring someone from the future?