Zutto Mae kara Suki deshita. Kokuhaku Jikkou Iinkai

I gotta admit, I'm a sucker for a good romance. I like it in basically every shape or form: I like it with a sad ending, a happy ending, with comedic ambiance, with serious atmosphere and one of my favourite types is the cute, heart-warming one.

But this one?

This one I hated.

I can't even describe how excruciating it was to watch. The plot was completely decentralized, unnecerarily jumping from one character to another. I guess the writers wanted to include as many stories from the music videos as possible but because of the limited time they had for this movie, it ended up being about ... everything and nothing at the same time.

The formula that worked in case of the music videos, where we knew close to nothing about characters but still rooted for them, certainly shouldn't have been applied here.
The personalities of the characters are just your cookie-cutter shoujo archetypes or at least they seem so because, as I mentioned before, we know close to NOTHING about the characters. We don't really know much about their relationships beside who-has-a-crush-on-whom, we never learn why these characters are in love with each other, we don't really know their history, we are just randomly presented with certain informations about them like "this girl likes this band", "this boy likes video games", "just person likes this person... just because".
This one hour is filled mostly with some mundane, irrelevant to the plot and random scenes that don't even add much to the characters, they just happen because "everyone eats food, people eat food and have a small talk, let's have a scene with 3 characters stuffing themeselves and talking about nothing!" or that scene that got me scratching my head the most with the question "why does it have to exist?" which is... a shot of each character sitting in their bathtubs at the same and just thinking about how much their suck when it comes to love.

Dear Lord, cease my suffering.

I wasn't expecting some kind of super deep-psychological character development or complicated plot or anything. I wanted to see a simple, cute high-school romance and let go of my worries for today. But this is so badly written storyboard-wise, and since I write stories myself, I just can't help but get irritated by how you can delete the majority of the movie and it would change almost nothing about the plot. The story is just a one big mess. Instead of introducing us to a close to 10 characters, the writers should've focused on the main 3 the movie is supposed be about: Natsuki, Ayase and Yuu and just go with their story.

This way there would be more time to invest in showing us the relationship between Natsuki and the boys and we would know why are we supposed to root for them. Because I don't root for them. I don't fricking care who she end up with at the end because I know close to nothing about this characters, their history and their personalities. Let us see why Natsuki and Yuu are such good friends, let us see how they interact with each other. Show us how Natsuki and Ayase met and why he fell in love with her. Fricking show us his make-over he supposedly did just for her! We are only presented with this fact in the fricking moment he shows up on the screen for the first time! Like "This is Ayase, btw he looked like this in the past but this was before the movie". This way we would have mor cohesive and engaging story.

There's this other movie about Yuu's little sis Hina, which btw I watched before this flick because I didn't know they were related. They did what I just said and it turned out sooooo much better. I mean, it wasn't great but I can at least say I kinda enjoyed it. We saw how Hina met the guy, how she started falling in love with him, why she fell in love with him, what she felt back then etc. etc. It revolved mostly about her story, hinting from time to time that there are other characters with their own crushes ("check our music videos for more, *win wink*") but it never to deviate from the main plotline which was good. Heck, I only know anything about Ayase thanks to that anime!

And that's why I think this story is terrible and you shouldn't waste your time on it, go watch the music videos, good night.

Story: It's nothing new or original; just a very straightforward story about crushes and high school love. Not that it HAD to be an original or innovative romance, but when the plot is THAT cut and dry, it's hard not to be bored out of your mind as you're watching it. I wouldn't even say it executed the whole romance aspect particularly well.

Art: I actually did enjoy the art. It was very pleasing to watch and had a lot of attractive colors.

Sound: The sound and music were fine. Nothing really stood out, but it generally was appropriate for a movie about romance.

Character: This is ... probably where the movie falls flat on its face. The characters are incredibly shallow. What I mean by that is that they're very one-dimensional and you know (and care, for that matter) very little about them. None of them really have any qualities that make them memorable or relatable. I don't mean to be harsh, but honestly, every character I encountered in the movie is a throwaway character that adds nothing to the story or has any substantial dynamic with anyone other than their love interest.

Enjoyment/Overall: It was pretty boring to be honest. When you give someone a bunch of pointless characters who don't do anything more than have very simple crushes on each other, it's hard to keep their interest. Maybe a movie wasn't the best medium for this kind of story. Maybe if they had more time (like in the form of a regular one cour anime), the creators could better develop the story or get the audience more invested with the characters.

Any connection what's in the story leaves a sour taste at the end of the movie.

What's more great is that any related scenes can't highly approved onto certain degree scale of a typical romance.

I expected Honeyworks was behind of this movie As I checked down the artstyle alone. Part of the movie lacking a point of view, and a plain atmosphere. At least the same MC which in reverse, From Shounen to Shoujo, They can't convey the spirit of a certain feelings on someone.

Every music videos by Honeyworks was indeed good compare to this adaptation of the movie, Cause what's truly lacking are the ... sidesteps of a mellow music.

A standalone Mediocre since I'd totally expecting a high praised and ended a huge dragged.

I don't wanna rewatch it and think about it, within regards to this movie. As I grief and won't satisfy my inner side.

Overall 4.75/10

*Disclaimer...?
First of all, now that I realize Aida Miou's side of the story is also getting animated, I'm gonna conserve all judgments for it. Yaaaaaaay!!! Miiiiiraaaiiiiiinooooowaaaaataaaaashieeee
Also I understand A-1 only helped and the real animators are Qualia Animations, but it's really likely that this new studio came from A1, which then means they contributed way more than just a subservice. So point still the same. But if the third movie is much (or at least a little) better I'll delete this right away.






Fuck you A1.
...
I think through this one it's finally official. A1 doesn't give a jack shit about making a good anime.





When I first heard that my beloved music series was getting animated, I had nothing but doubts after the last one's...uh, unfortunate turnout. I'm of course referring to Shaft's adaptation of Kagerou Project. Then again, adaptation is a kind word here.
But when I heard that it was getting done by A1 who love to make adoring girls more adorable than humanly possible, I had my hopes. And even more so when I heard that they were making a movie out of this, and not a series. While I would've personally wanted to see Enemoto and Miou and hear Sana's voice every week, a movie would spell lots and lots of budget, and that meant fluid movements, uncringey (at the very least) dialogues, and infinite moeflower. This was one of those anime that would benefit from having a shameless display of infinite moedom. It's a simple series of music videos with a simple storyline, there's nothing complicated. That's one of the greatest thing about Honeywork's works.



Before I go any further, though, let me be clear; the music was amazing. I seriously can't get enough of Sana's voice in my ears. Not to mention some of the greatest voice actors/actresses of our generations were hired into this thing.

My point is: and for what?

There's no point in even saying spoiler-free or there's no revelations. It's a simple love story. I mean, it's in the FUCKING TITLE. The girl loves someone, and confesses to him, and gets cold feet and goes back on her confession, have some troubles along the way, and lo and behold, ends up dating the guy. Wow, who could've seen that coming?

So what the hell is so complicated about all these?

There's nothing difficult about making girls in love look cute and talk like they're girls their age, and same with boys. #genderequality. But what exactly did we get?

They just made a two-hour-long version of the music videos.



And I mean it. The dialogues were blatant copies of the actual song (yes, because people talk like they sing all the time) and character design was borderline unwatchable. But to be fair, the animation was good, except it wasn't. We got the one-frame bullshit we are so sick of watching by now in a FUCKING MOVIE, and even worse they almost basically REUSED some of the illustrations from the music videos.

Why in the hell would I listen to someone talk about a song I love for two hours instead of just, you know, watching the actual song?

There was no point in this movie at all. The only exceptions were maybe seeing the characters move (which was halfly done and sometimes not done at all) and listening to Sana and the voice actors/actresses' renditions of the songs I love and enjoy. But, and here's the thing, if this is all they were good for, how is it better than watching a nicodouga mad video of a new song by honeyworks? It isn't. It really isn't. I actually wanna see that happen now.



The characters were a joke. The actual characters in the music video are top-notch, of course, but they were almost shamefully underused. For example, we never got to see what the hell happened to Aida Miou. This chafed me up so much because she was my most favorite character. What even is the point of her besides giving the angry fans time to calm down and put down their pitchforks? We never got any glimpses of her problem or her issues, and we never even saw if she ended up with the guy.

Then they at least focused on the main couples, right? Yeah, no.

Fair enough, they got the most screeentime. But here we see time and time again, their lacking dialogues and cheap animations. They at least got all of their stories out, so I guess that's a start...




Overall, I was just too disappointed to give this movie a fair judgment. If I didn't know about the original music video series I would've given it a 6 at the lowest. But here's the thing about adaptation; they're adaptations. There's a reason people raged on Death Note and Ghost in the Shell more than the other hollywood garbage regularly produced. They are supposed to satisfy the fanbase. At least Death Note and GitS did their best. Both went out of their way to fit a mainstream audience, changed the settings to not simply make a remake, and gave no commission to the budget.
Yes, I know, comparing hollywood to anime movies is harsh, but here's my counterpoint.

Sagiri.



So no. Fuck you A1.
You had time to give Sagiri her own animator in the trashiest show of the season, if not of the year (of course I exaggerate) but you couldn't give two fucks to give Honeyworks and their crew a proper adaptation, in a movie, in a story simpler than the Giving Tree?

Fuck you A1.

If you're looking for a GOOD RomCom anime movie... Better stay away from this one.......

OKAY ... I don't want to make a shit ton of paragraphs , so let's keep this short shall we?

Story : 3

The story isn't interesting at all . It's like a boring and cliche-ish fanfiction written by a middle-schooler (no offense to middle-schoolers and fanfictioners). And it had me gagging all the time because of the amount of cringe i get by watching some of the OVERLY - CHEESY scenes ... YIKES!

Characters : 2

The characters is probably the worst thing in this anime . None of them have a ... deep , colorful personality . And there are times when all of them are just so obnoxious that I ended up skipping some parts because i get so irritated just by looking at their faces.

Art : 9

The art is honestly pretty good , and I can't deny that . I like the usage of colors and and highlights around the eyes and everything .

Sound : 8

The soundtracks used in this anime is actually beautiful , and some of them ended up on my playlist ...... lol

Enjoyment: 2

Ugh... does it seem like I enjoyed this ?

Overall : 4

Ye ...... No matter how good the animation and music that's in this movie , I still find this movie very distasteful and a complete mess , and obviously, it didn't reach my expectations


Well, this is it guys , my review for this anime. Clearly , I don't recommend watching this . If you want to watch some great RomCom anime , there's a ton of em there , just don't think about bothering this one..

datz it and am out!

“I've Always Liked You” is what happens when… honestly? I have no idea. Maybe it’s what happens when You have a metal rod stuck in Your frontopolar cortex and yet someone forces You at gunpoint to write a script.

It’s hard for me to even call this a movie. It’s just a series of scenes stitched together in a chaotic way. There is an overarching motif (confessions) but its execution is so bland You’ll forget about it in an instant.

Let’s get this out of the way. This is one of those cases where the story is plot driven and not character driven. The focus isn’t the ... relationship between characters but just the act of confessing their love. Everything happens not because it makes sense, not because the characters made the best possible decision in their eyes. Everything happens because the plot deems it so. Even if it doesn’t even make a lick of sense.

All the characters are annoying and poorly written. I couldn’t tell You anything about any of them if You held me at gunpoint. Maybe it’s done on purpose. After all, teenagers are annoying twats in most cases. If that’s the reason… 10/10 character design. The main character (and I use that term extremely loosely) is loud, obnoxious and kind of a moron… and also a ripoff of a much better character from “Lovely Complex” (go watch that instead).

Another problem is the amount of characters. There are too many for anyone to actually give a damn and ALL of them are just one trait pumped up to 11 to pretend it’s a personality. We have a shy girl, a shy guy, a friend next door, a ripoff of Risa from “Lovely Complex” (yes, I’m not joking, they are almost 1:1 in design and “character”) etc. You get the idea. None of them get the screen time needed to get invested in them. Even in the more dramatic scenes I felt nothing, because I didn’t care about them. I had no idea who they were as characters. All I knew is their function in the story and that’s not very immersive.

You could easily delete about half of this movie and the plot would stay the same. What’s more strange is that one of the “romances” isn’t even resolved during the movie itself. The resolution is shown during the slideshow with the end credits. Clearly a 300 IQ move. Who would want to get everything in the movie? It’s much better to use the part that most people don’t care about. It’s just so… amateurish. It almost looks like there was no one with experience in actually writing and directing an actual movie.

I have seen and read many stories, in many forms but this script is probably one of the most nonsensical and amateurish I have ever witnessed.