![Now and Then, Here and There (Complete Collector's Boxed Set) [DVD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51YBH647NEL._SX300_SY300_QL70_ML2_.jpg)
This anime was gripping to me because it had believable characters and anti-war themes though there were some shortfalls in the story line.
"Now and Then, Here and There" has characters whose qualities were realistic. There was Nabuca who fights for Hellywood only so that he can eventually return to his village. There is the ruthless and despotic King Hamdo who, for example, will give the order to fire a missile at an enemy battleship knowing that many of his own soldiers who have already been deployed will also die. Then there is Sarah, the kidnapped girl who is forced to serve as a "comfort woman" in King Hamdo's army and who manages to escape only after killing a soldier who is trying to rape her. Sarah was an especially moving character because the story goes on to portray how she struggles to cope with her traumatic experiences of having been raped and of having killed a soldier.
This film is also thought provoking because it humanizes King Hamdo's soldiers. Unlike Star Wars where the imperial stormtroopers are presented as undifferentiated masses, King Hamdo's soldiers are presented as people who each have different personalities and aspirations. For instance, Tabool is seduced by the power and profit that comes with serving in the army and he is indifferent to the human cost of fighting. By contrast, Nabuca, another soldier, struggles within himself about the morality of killing and enslaving other human beings. There's also Boo, a boy soldier and Nabuca's friend, who courageously acts on his conscience twice when he both helps Shu escape execution and also when he refuses to shoot a group of village children during the siege of Zaribars.
Unfortunately, this anime resolves some conflicts in ways that are too artificial. For example, when Shu and Lala-Ru are in the desert running away from a plant monster, they just happen to find a bag with explosives. The monster, which I presume can only feel and not see, just happens eat an explosive inadvertently so that it blows itself up. Moreover, the fact that Shu, an Earth person who had never been to Lala-Ru's planet before, was able to find the town Zaribars without any guidance either from Lala-Ru or from a map also seemed to be too improbable in the story.
Though "Now and Then, Here and There" doesn't have animation that is as high-speed and lifelike as Armitage III and though its story is too contrived at times, it nevertheless offers an array of individualized characters who are vividly portrayed as each struggles in his or her own way to deal with the hardships of war.
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