Saw Patema Inverted, a fun and cute anime with the following premise: due to some unspecified scientific experiment, a large amount of physical material (including people) accidentally had their gravity reversed, sending them all flying into the sky. Centuries later, the remnants of the upside-down people live in a maze-like warren of underground bunkers while the right-side-up folks live on the earth's surface. The right-side-uppers have deemed the upside-downers to be sinful. The protagonists are a girl from the upside-down-iverse and a boy from the land of right-side-up. It's all a little obvious.
So, the rank intolerance of the upside-down/right-side-up feud clearly evokes many differences in the real world. When the boy and girl first meet, they have a brief argument about which one of them is upside down. Later, in imposing 1984-style education facilities, the children are taught that upside-downers are immoral, suggesting a parallel with sexuality or to religious intolerance. One of the leaders talks about how terrible it would be if their blood were to mingle, referencing rhetoric about racial divisions. It's a broad gesture and encompasses many things.
The film is very cute and fun. The two kids hug onto each other frequently in order to descend or ascend huge drops. I'm not sure that the physics is quite right, but maybe. It does result in them creating a visual metaphor for the theme of the film: that we need to come together and bridge our differences, that opposites can be synergistic rather than antagonistic.
The film is also stealing liberally from early Ghibli films. The characters are sweet and curious, courageous in a sort of cat-like way, and live in sumptuously detailed surroundings. It's a good thing to steal from! The film is relatively slight but very sweet and touching. I enjoyed it!
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