The Dimension Travelers

Review

This is a rather confusing, albeit good, movie. At the start of the movie we seem to be focused on four characters, but three of them are basically of no importance. Midori is the only one of the four that is truly a main character. She is joined by another girl, Mayumi, later, and late in the film a male character, Yamazawa.

It seems that they are able to travel to different dimensions. In their home dimension (?) some unnamed enemy is controlling people by using "control rays". A mutation occurs, giving some people the ability to cause the things they imagine to become reality.

Mayumi has been doing a lot of dimension hopping, apparently, since each dimension she goes to ends up being destroyed somehow. The three are intimately involved in what is going on but don't realize it until late in the film.

This is more psychological thriller than horror or science fiction film. In some ways it resembles The Matrix movie, in some ways it reminds me of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it also reminds me somewhat of The Prisoner. It's a very intellectual film, especially in the beginning with the explanations of dimensions, realities, etc. The only thing I wish it would have cleared up was the nature of this "enemy," whether it was some sort of alien being or some Earth-based political group that got control. The weapon that is used tends to indicate an alien enemy, but there is no way to know for absolute positive.

Overall an interesting, at most times confusing film.

Synopsis

Interior of the train which looks exactly like trains in various anime shows.

The group of schoolgirls including Rika ("head monkey"), Misaki (puts others down all the time), Atsumi (a follower; the one with braids), and Midori (the main girl).

Midori has come home and finds out that this girl is moving into the same apartment building. Midori, by the way, is the one who points out the faults of the other girls and then proceeds to steal a flower from a flower shop.

The girl gets the elevator to stop at the sixth floor without pressing any of the buttons.

The new girl joins Midori's class.

Midori in the school library (which is really beautiful!). Anyhow, apparently her flower-stealing habit is major as she takes the flowers she steals and puts them in the pages of the various library books (like would be done in a plant taxonomy class, but with proper materials), and then wanders around the library, picking out the books with the flowers and looking at the flowers.

The new girl has taken one of the books that Midori uses for flower-pressing.

The girl is in a way explaining the Shroedinger's Cat Paradox which basically involves putting a cat in a box with some radioactive material and a poisonous gas. The radioactive material, if it does one thing, will lead to release of the gas and the death of the cat. If the radioactive material behaves in a different manner, though, there is no release of gas and the cat lives. The human observer is what, in essence, determines whether the cat lives or dies when he or she opens the box and has a preformed idea of whether or not the cat is alive or dead. Thus, our thoughts can influence physical reality.

Which, of course, is the principle behind the concept of spiritual prayer; thoughts influence physical reality.

Mayumi finds the flower and says the girl who put it there wants to turn the library into a flower garden and the next moment they are both standing in a garden of sunflowers which, of course, ends a moment later when they are both back in "reality."

Midori's rather poorly-lit room. She just came from having supper in their poorly-lit kitchen.

Mayumi doesn't like the school.

Mayumi claims she is from another dimension where the city she lived in was destroyed by a nuclear satellite falling to earth and that only she and her mother survived. She also claims that she has crossed dimensions before, and that when it happens the world she enters "adjusts," in effect providing her with an identity, I assume legal papers, etc.

Midori asks why Mayumi and her mother keep going into different dimensions and this is the unsettling answer she receives.

Midori is following Mayumi in the library but Mayumi suddenly disappears. Something happens to Midori and she passes out, waking up in a medical room. Someone from the next room talks about an underground, a castle and control rays.

An old woman brings Midori some flowers and says they found Midori collapsed by a flower stand (not in the school).

Now it gets a little like the Buffy episode where Buffy thought she was in a mental hospital (and we never really know for sure if that was reality or not.) The doctors say Midori's been in the hospital for years. (But then why did the old women say they found her collapsed by the flower shop?)

Suddenly Midori moves from an insane asylum back to her home.

An injured Mayumi suddenly appears in Midori's bedroom.

The two girls become closer all the time.

The TV announcer in the background is talking about a satellite that is falling from orbit with nuclear fuel, the same one that destroyed Mayumi's world at the start of the film in her reality.

She enters her room after dinner and is back in the hospital again.

She manages to escape but ends up in another reality (referred to by Mayumi when she appeared in Midori's bedroom.)

This is supposedly a "castle of pleasure" where people are bombarded by "control rays" and live out their delusions. Mayumi is one of very few resisters left.

Mayumi says that if they don't keep jumping dimensions they will basically adapt totally to the world they are in and forget their past.Midori wants to help the bunker world and Mayumi mentions about the secret passageway. It turns out Midori had heard someone talk about that one time when she was in the bunker world so she knows the way.

They go directly from the school corridor to the bunker corridor. They find the secret route and are going to the castle (but don't seem to be carrying any weapons). Their vocabulary seems to lack the word "stealth" because Mayumi's footfalls are so heavy they probably hear her coming at the other end of the route.

They open a door to the castle and step out into a shopping area.

Midori somehow returns to her home where her father slaps her for being out all night.

The grandmother figure from the hospital is now at Midori's house.

A doctor is brought in to talk to Midori.

Midori runs away and meets Mayumi. They both try to get away.

Mayumi says the dimensions are overlapping. All the people seem to have disappeared.

They get to their school but suddenly shift dimensions again.

Someone she knows appears and explains that there was a mutation that allowed some people to turn their thoughts into reality. The "enemy", whoever that is, gathered these people together into one place to try to control them.

Supposedly when people like them (called Capables) come together, they influence each other someone and this is leading to worlds being destroyed.

Apparently if they go to separate dimensions the destructive effects will stop.

The realities blur even more.

Midori crosses to another dimension and the destruction stops in the one reality. The dimension travelers must forever remain in separate dimensions, alone, in order to stop any more worlds from being destroyed.


Main index page

Japanese Dramas Main Index Page