Uchiage Hanabi

A seemengly cashgrab.

First of all lets talk about the visuals, it looks pretty. Its well animated as expected from Shaft, with stunning backgrounds and bright colours. For music, the duet did an ok job.

Now the problem is the characters designs, which are reminiscent of the Monogatari franchise, suggesting that Shaft is trying to play it safe. The video doesn't tell us much about the story but we clearly see that it's a romance with some sort of contrived magical object.

All in all i wouldn't expect much from this new movie,especially because of previous movies failures with the pretty colours being the only redeemable quality.

*Disclaimer*
Just personal scratch.
Advised, possible spoilers.
Opinion & Informal

Art: 5/10 I know SHAFT can put out some really nice looking stuff, but for a movie...I'm not so sure about what this music video was able present to me. What this short MV was able to convey to me in its 4 minute duration is that SHAFT basically made a movie with television-production quality. To me, it just looked like they made a movie-length television series with television series art quality and television series animation quality. Realistic proportions and anatomy. Cute-realistic style. Unrealistic eye sizes, especially for the presented male MC. Scenery, water, and objects looked realistic. Looks ... pretty good in general though.

Animation: 5/10 Common SHAFT stuff was showcased in this MV: Impact-scene head-tilts, closeups, awestruck faces. SHAFT really likes to impact-scene facial expressions and closeups; got a lot of that in this MV. There were also clear shortcuts taken on some of the movements and motions that were showcased in this, skipping frames, cut shots (from what I was only able to see in this MV alone, I am unaware of what certain transitions may have actually been in the film).

Characters: 5/10 MV. Showcased the characters with only visual introduction.

Plot: N/A. Music video.

Development N/A. Music video.

Music: 6/10 This part's subjective to the listener. I personally thought it was okay. It wasn't too catchy. Although I've listened to her quite a bit, I don't particularly like DAOKO because her recent albums sound so flat-lined. I just think she hasn't really added any flair to her recent releases because she doesn't really go beyond her usual style: I wouldn't say monotone, but she pretty much sounds the "same" in a lot of her releases. The only thing she really mixes is the speed in which she drops bars.

Conclusion: N/A. Music video.

Overall: 4/10 Everything was about average but I decided to give this a 4 because for a music video this sort of failed. It literally just took clips of the film and added a song over it. This can pretty much be done by anyone. In fact, there's even a few fan-made tribute videos that, too, take clips of the film and play this exact same song over it. Low quality advertising that basically took all the impact-scenes from the film to make it look pretty and used a fairly (fairly) well known singer to add even more hype to the product. "Wow! take a gander at all these impact-scenes with awestruck and wide-eyed characters as well as this sorta popular singer! Haha! Watch our film please!" It's sort of concerning when this music video has a significantly higher community score than the actual film.