If this weren’t just released on Netflix, I probably wouldn’t have watched it but we do watch lighter fare once in a while. This Korean animated film may feature slick visuals and a science-fiction setting but don’t be fooled. It’s an old-school romance which doesn’t hesitate in pouring on the melodrama to wring out your tears. Still, I can’t be entirely dismissive as newcomer director Han Ji-Won knows exactly what he is going for and does a great job of filling the screen with spectacular if not entirely realistic imagery.

Twenty years ago, all members of an expedition to Mars were lost due to a sudden quake. Now the world is going to try again and among the prospective astronauts is the Korean Nan-young, whose mother was one of those who perished. A biologist, she is eager to search for life on the Red Planet but a psychological assessment reveals that she has unresolved trauma due to her mother’s death and so she is placed on the backup team. On a break back in Korea, she runs into Jay while trying to find someone to repair her mother’s retro record player. Jay was once an aspiring musician but now works in a store repairing antique devices. Coincidentally, Nan-young discovers that he is the mysterious musician who performed her favorite piece of music and then disappeared from the scene. Naturally the two fall in love and inspire one another. Him to resume his musical career, her to complete the development of a scanner that will impress her superiors enough to put her back on the mission team. But this also means that the lovers must face being apart for the year-long duration of Nan-young’s trip.

The concept behind this film seems to be to literally realize the familiar saying of star-crossed lovers. It’s not subtle and there are barely any supporting characters. The film just keeps beating you over the head with every tool at its disposal how sweetly romantic a couple they are: clumsy tripping and falling into each other, a perfect day at the beach, sharing an umbrellas in the rain, montages that go on for far too long. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before but the thing about these old-fashioned tricks is that they work. Step by step, even if it’s against our better judgment, we’re led into this sappy romance. I do like some of the details, such as reversing the usual stereotypes so that it’s the girl who is the smart astronaut even if she seems distressingly girlish in her private life when she should be a competent adult. It’s also amusing how Nan-young knows how to build a hovering robot that scans for signs of life but is utterly clueless how to operate an old-fashioned pen.

The art is undeniably gorgeous and there’s a kind of wonder in how crammed full of detail nearly every shot is. The near future version of Seoul is everything futurists dream of, the spacecraft they use with its agricultural ring is elegantly beautiful and Han imaginatively colorizes her vision of space and the cosmos so it’s not boringly black. Plausibility is debatable. It’s odd that Nan-young can build a flying robot that looks nothing like today’s drones yet laptops basically still look the same. But the more concerning issue is that all of the spaces depicted look oddly desolate. So whether it is the streets of Seoul, a visit to the observatory or the beaches of Florida, wherever they go it’s usually just Nan-young and Jay. Sure, the intent may be to double down on this being a romance between these two characters but they don’t seem to exist in the real world at all.

This sort of light romance has its place and undoubtedly its audience. The art is fantastic, it makes good use of the usual romance tropes and that should be good enough for most people. My main gripe is that both characters ought to have been portrayed more like adults in the prime of their lives instead of teenagers but perhaps that’s too much of an ask in an animated film.