If you are a young Japanese boy and you wake up all cheerful one day, go to school and afterwards climb a tower to watch the sunset in the late afternoon where you encounter a mysterious and quiet girl with blue hair, there is a good chance you will suddenly be kidnapped by interdimensional robots operated by an evil military organization.

This is what happens to the young hero Shu of “Now and Then, Here and There.” I had a feeling something horrible would happen to him when in the opening scene of the series he gleefully sits down at the breakfast table to eat some nato. Now, I know some people love Nato. I’ve met people who think it is a fabuous dish to eat in the morning, perhaps with an egg broken over it. Nato is a dish made out of fermented soybeans. It is brown and stringy, and it looks and smells like I what I would imagine would come out of an alien if they had an upset tummy. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with people who adore nato, it is just not for me 🙂

So with the introduction of Nato so early in the series, I had a feeling that things would take a sudden turn for the worse. After a rough day at school where he loses a kendo match, Shu is watching the sunset with a enigmatic girl named Lala Ru, when suddenly several robots materialize (a couple are giant mechanical dragons or snakes) and kidnap Lala, with Shu accidently pulled into an interdimensional vortex. Shu ends up on the run on a giant military ship, captured, beaten, tortured by a sadistic king…then it starts to get worse. The style of animation is simplistic and many of the characters in the series are children, but this contrasts greatly with the plot as Shu is confronted with the horrors of war. It doesn’t seem to be the stereotypical “plucky boy gets a robot and perseveres against his enemies through will power and determination” type of series that I originally thought it was going to be after watching the first half of episode one. Now and Then, Here and There is on three disks, and I’ve only watched the first one so far. I’m not sure how or if Shu will manage to rescue Lala and get back to Japan, but I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the series.