An acclaimed anime with a far-away setting

A Place Further than the Universe or as it is known in Japanese, Sora yori mo Tōi Basho 宇宙よりも遠い場所 (or Yorimoi for short), is a TV anime series about a high school girl and her three friends who embark on an journey to search for her mother, an Antarctic observation crew member who went missing during her last expedition. Produced by Madhouse, the anime aired in Japan between January and March 2018 and was co-produced and distributed internationally by Crunchyroll. With its touching story, unusual setting and human drama, the anime was well received both in Japan and abroad and was selected by The New York Times as the #8 International Show of the Year for 2018.

An avid fan's mission

Logic Watanabe, a salaryman by day and columnist by night whose website, Logic Paradise, is one of the oldest active text-based sites on the Internet, was one the many people who were profoundly moved and inspired by the anime. As he explains on a dedicated column in Logic Paradise, such was the impact that he literally howled at the sky with tears streaming down his cheeks...

---

Nearly one year after the anime broadcast, after somehow managing to get permission from his company to take a two-week personal holiday and coming up with the nearly 2 million yen required in airfare, port dues and insurance fees, Mr. Watanabe surprised his nearly 15,000 Twitter followers on February 1st with clear photographic evidence that he had finally reached his destination. While anime parody sites like Anime Maru set it up as an outlandish site for an anime pilgrimage, he had actually accomplished it!

We reached out to Mr. Watanabe, still on location in Antarctica (at the time of writing) and he kindly provided us with a few additional photos, which we have added to the ones already posted on his Twitter account:

Now Reporting From "The Place Further than the Universe"

The boat which transported him to Antarctica:

The Drake Passage

Antarctica at last

Penguins!

Yorimoi Pilgrim Mr. Watanabe has landed (the sign says: "Congratulations on landing in Antarctica!")

Hinata, Shirase, Kimari and Yuzuki are all here!

Did we mention there were penguins?

Can you find Shirase?

---

This weekend, Mr. Watanabe says he will update his Twitter account with more photos and, for those who can read Japanese, he will soon post Part 3 of his ongoing column "Journey to Antarctica: Yorimoi Pilgrimage Site" on Logic Paradise.