It's not often that you get an anime creator like Miyazaki to create a movie to go along with your music, but that is exactly what happened to Chage and Aska (a J-Rock group) with their song On Your Mark. With a running time of just over six minutes, On Your Mark doesn't really leave a whole lot of room for story or character development. Then again, this is Miyazaki we're talking about.

On Your Mark isn't so much an anime set to a song as it is a song set to an anime. I really didn't think the two went together at all. The pace of the animation was very different from the pace of the music. Many times, scene transitions were very abrupt and very much unlike other Miyazaki works. The whole music video had a very shaky feel to it, like I didn't have enough time to get used to the scene I was watching. Another thing that I didn't really understand was Miyazaki's constant interrupting of the story to repeat what had already happened.

The art and animation are pretty much standard Studio Ghibli fare, which is to say they're as good as they've ever been. Even though the setting seemed to be one of the post-apocalyptic variety, the backgrounds and characters were still very, very detailed. It really is astounding that that much work would be done for a music video.

That's all fine and good, but what of the music quality? Well, let's just say I didn't get the urge to listen to more Chage and Aska after I finished watching this. What bothered me was that with a translation of the song by my side while I watched this, I couldn't really understand why Miyazaki used the song to go with this anime at all (or vice versa). The lyrics hardly match what's going on in the anime. However, I found that if you just tune out the lyrics and simply listen to the music itself while watching On Your Mark, it's a lot more enjoyable.

So is On Your Mark worth watching? Of course it is! How could you possibly not watch a six-minute Miyazaki flick? If you don't like J-Rock music, then hey, that's why mute buttons were made.