Fragtime

“ZAA WARUDOOOO” *time stops* *looks at panties* Well that is what Fragtime is about.

Fragtime, a short slice of life movie with a touch of supernatural. Don’t go and expect that there is depth dedicated towards the power, because it is more important what the two main protagonist do with it. This anime has lots of subtle and more obvious hints towards their symbolism and deeper meaning. This is the story of two girls finding each other and their selves.
Given the nature of this anime I’m discussing the symbolism and characters at once.

Misuzu Moritani
The story is told as we mostly follow Misuzu and her thoughts. ... A quiet girl with no friends, no aspiration. Your average quiet kid of the class. Other people seem to have trouble with socializing with her because she kind of lives in her own bubble, her own world of 3 minutes silence. Her power is to stop time for 3 minutes. This is her escapism to trouble and pressure.

Haruka Murakami
Top student of the class, beautiful and most loved by the class. She has a unapproachable aura as she is to perfect for other boys or girls. However due to that she is extremely popular. You can see her being very lenient and helping other classmates. She is so lenient it almost looks like she doesn’t care at all. Being haunted and driven by hear own fear, she has no personality. She selfishly keeps on giving. Her line “do whatever you want” oooh damn, that’s hot.

Story:
So Misuzu can stop time and Haruka can move while time is stopped. While Haruka gives the most obvious hint herself “You love me, you want to spend time with me”. This is an extremely important sentence. Both of the girl has something they want to escape and obtain. Haruka can move in the stopped time because Misuzu wants it in her own world. Without too much fuss about the working of power it gives off a strong symbol. In the second half where everything goes downhill, Haruka’s actions all makes sense. Why she wants Misuzu and why she goes crazy in those 30 seconds. There are some more hidden symbols (with sort of flashes) but I didn’t quite get that.

I think this anime is easy to watch as it spells out the important aspects and quickly comes to the point. Both of the girls can take the initiative and aren’t holding back to much (unlike most romance anime). The dialogues or sometimes a bit cheesy and lacks some passion. It disappoints me that the voice actress didn’t do it as good as I hoped (they both voiced major roles) I couldn’t feel much emotions from them. All in all Fragtime is an easy anime with a clear message to tell you. It execution is a bit wacky but gets the job done. This is perfect for a chill evening if you like easygoing slice of life with a touch of yuri.

This film is very fetishistic and autistic. You should know that going in, before you get started. It has a very distinct idea of both what life and anime is like, and goes in extremely hard in that deeply unique concept, for better or worse.

But you're reading the review, so the question is: should you watch this? Is this good?

I won't say it's bad. But it's certainly nothing memorable. The key issue here is that the entire premise of this story, while fine on its own, does not roll itself into something complete by the end. Because it's extremely insistent in its exploration of ... ideas (peeping toms, obsessive lovers, inability to socialize normally, and general neurodivergency), you have to really resonate with one or more of those ideas to begin to resonate with the film. And if you resonate with none of these concepts, or only one of them, then you might not like this film.

This is all on top of the fact that the film is only 60 minutes long. With such a short runtime, it really has to execute in some fashion to maintain itself. And I think it does a solid job in that regard; the animation and general story is fine as it is. But it comes back to that lack of memory; this film doesn't do anything special, it doesn't stand out. It's just an emotional romp. And if that's all you want, then good for you. But if you're expecting something more than just a jaunt of upskirting, minimal yuri relationships, and weird sci-fi, you're digging too deep on this one.