Dounika Naru Hibi

Okay .. This movie was really disappointing.

1st story: I'm not a big fan of Yuri, so I found the story really dull. I take that back .. There was no story present! It had potential, but they rushed it and just kept the dull parts and some bed scenes.

2nd story: Wow .. The story that I looked forward to the most was the most disappointing one. A boy confesses his feelings to his closeted teacher and that's it. The story goes nowhere. Whyyy?

3rd story: Super uncomfortable to watch. A girl and a boy who are still kids thinking and talking about s*x and the parents ... are oblivious throughout the whole story. Why did they even bother putting them in the story? The p star cousin was talking to the boy about sexual things at the dinner table and the dad was smiling and enjoying his meal like he was hearing nothing wrong. I'm not even going to talk about the rushed unsatisfying ending.

I liked the simple art & animation though.

When I first heard about this series I was admittedly very excited. I saw this had a lesbian couple and wanting some representation, I was hoping that this movie would be able to handle it well unlike citrus or other things on that wavelength. As you can see, that has not happened.

Story - 1/10

A lot of this short film felt like a retelling of scum's wish.

So if you like that anime, you may like this one. There are a lot of similar plotlines in both, with different iterations. For example, possible incest is present in both, teachers, and just horribly done yuri.

Things just don't seem ... to wrap up nicely too. It makes you feel extremely unsatisfied and wondering if there is going to be more.

It also just felt so slow. 55 minutes feelings like such a long time at the pace this movie was going. This movie also had an issue with repeating jokes and lines, and it feels like we were going in circles. This is especially present in the third story following this guy and his girlfriend go through the struggles of being in love when the guy is attracted to his cousin who does porn.

It feels like such a cheap way to add tension and make jokes, especially considering the length of the time frame the issue occurs for.


Art/Sound - 4/10

They were both okay.

Not great, not even that good, but they were fine. The art was cute, but that was it. It isn't spectacular, and the colours were a bit drab at times, but it was alright.

The sound was also fine. The opening and ending were both fine to good, depending on what you favour in music. It was also quiet for a lot of the times, not a lot of noise or sound, it felt extremely empty. When background music was used some of them felt very off and some of the tracks just ended unexpectedly, bringing you out of the illusion.

There is also a scene where there is someone using the restroom, and the sound just does not fit. It sounds like there's rain pouring, but it occurs in a locked room and there's no sign of downpour.

Characters - 1/10

The characters are so very bland. Since this is a collection of short stories there are a lot of them. I completely understand not being able to develop characters in the span of about 15-20 minutes each, but they just made them so unlikable. For example, story one, the two main leads have zero chemistry. The only thing distinct about each of them is how they look, they're both in love with their ex and they both are sexually active, that's it. Even by the end of the ~15 minutes, their only real interactions are just to talk about their ex and have sex.

Enjoyment - 1/10

The feeling of checking when this movie would end was there with me the whole time. I kept checking the bar just to see how much time was left. It was boring, plain and simple. 55 minutes felt like 90, and it just dragged on and yet, It left me feeling so unsatisfied.

The endings to these stories felt like a massive cockblock and some of these lines just made me so confused, that I had to pause and think, "They really want to keep this in? Alright."

Overall - 1/10

All in all, this movie is just so boring and so mindlessly unentertaining. Stories go nowhere, and progression is just clunky. They could have made these into three separate stories spanning a few more episodes so development could occur, but they decided to just mash them all together ultimately, leaving the viewer confused as to why it existed in this form in the first place.

What we have here is a strong case of "what did they mean by this?" and "why did they post this?" Like, it's not BAD. It is by no means GOOD.

It seems to be trying to depict semi-taboo relationships that are nonetheless totally normal, which is fine in concept. But if these are more-or-less direct adaptations of stories from the 2002 manga (I have no idea), then I just have to scream "things have CHANGED!" Gay couples, like, exist. And always have. So opening a movie with this theme with a completely ordinary lesbian couple gives off weird vibes to me. (I recognize that I ... am writing as an American and this is a Japanese movie, but I'm explaining my feelings here.) The other three stories were about relationships that had real boundaries that were somewhat inappropriately crossed, so I just thought starting with an odd one out made little sense. Maybe they were connecting it to the others by having the high school girlfriend kiss her unprompted, but that's not the relationship that the story was really about. Very little happened in this story and it didn't bother giving us any characterization as to why the women were into each other, so I didn't care very much about it. It was the least objectionable one, though.

The second story was about a high school teacher man whose boy student confessed to him. This went nowhere, which is fine. But the story was more about the teacher's sense of longing for connection to his students, symbolized by kinda wanting this romantic fantasy to work out. Which is less fine. At that point, they're not teacher-and-studnet anymore, so I'm not going to say they would be breaking a Rule or anything, but the framing of the story keeps the focus on the high school kids of future classes and is consequently uncomfortable. But, like I said, it goes nowhere. It's very whatever because, again, we never actually get characterization.

The third short is a story about a grade-schooler's relationship with his cousin who has been disowned by her father because she appeared in a porn tape. She's very sexually open and talks to him about sex and teases him about his close friendship with a girl who goes to his school. And I think this is weird because sex is not high on my list of things to talk about with children, but I'm not going to pretend like keeping kids completely ignorant of sex somehow protects them. So, like, I'm not going to condemn this out of hand either. Its real sin is that it ends abruptly and serves mostly as a lead-in to the fourth short, which is about that boy and that girl. Do I even need to say that we don't actually get any reasons that the boy and girl like each other?

So, in the third skit, the girl proposed having sex with the boy and he declined. The fourth skit takes place years later, when they're in high school. It's about how they still want to have sex with each other and are awkward about their sexuality. And, like, ugh. There's no other way to say this. I don't understand any adults' fascination with children having sex or wanting to have sex. Acknowledging it exists is one thing, and that's what the third short skirted just barely on the "Uh, valid, I guess" edge of. This fourth skit is a lot more explicit about how horny they are and how much they want to have sex, but he doesn't feel ready in the way that she does. I just keep asking myself "Who is this for?" Who's the audience for this? Is this a movie for high school kids? If so, I Guess this could work as an interesting subject that could give a young person some sort of validation. But if this movie's audience is adults (or "everyone" 9_9), then why are we dwelling on child sexuality in this way right after the skit from a teacher's perspective about romantic feelings prompted by a student?

I dunno, dawg. The movie starts with something easy and palatable, but then takes risky swings for really difficult subjects. People have serious, valid hangups over these sorts of situations, which are nonetheless serious and valid themselves. The way that they depicted these scenarios seriously did not work for me, and the intentions of the film are truly opaque to me.