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[Warming Spoilers]

I went into this movie with high expectations, after all, it has incredibly high reviews and as of this review is the 21st highest ranked movie on MAL. While others seem to think this movie was incredible I for one was unable to be moved. I want to focus this review on the three main parts of the movie I found to be its downfall; characters, story, and pacing.

Characters:
This movie is at its heart a character drama dealing with the feelings of love and loss. Because of this it is incredibly important to write your characters in a way that makes them worthy of ... the audiences attention. This movie fails to do that. The main reason behind this in my opinion is lack of character development. Our main cast is never properly developed throughout this movies 115 minute run time. The only decent piece of character development we get happens in the first scene of the movie where Leilia jumps off a cliff into the water and Maquia refuses to follow, while Krim lectures Leilia for slacking off. This scene shows us that Leilia is an easy going carefree girl while Maquia is scared and timid and Krim hard working and disciplined. Yet these personality traits are never again exemplified in any of these characters. Through the rest of the movie these characters dont seem to show any unique traits to themselves nor any reason for us as an audience to be invested in them.

Story:
For me story was by far the part of this movie which dragged me out of it the most. The overall plot is not my issue but rather the writing and characters motivations for their actions. Throughout this movie many changes in the story are brought upon by a characters decision to do something. Yet, nearly none of these actions seem to make any sense in relation to the characters interests nor do they show any semblance of rational thought. Below are a few examples of awful writing that took me out of the movie.
- Leilia refusing to escape after being rescued by Maquia. She decides this under the guise that Krim wouldnt be able to look at her again, but for her to think this about being pregnant with a child that was forced upon her (and conceived through rape) is nothing but thick plot armor.
- Maquia deciding not to return home to Mido after failing to capture back Leilia. This would have been the objectivly best decision for the welfare of her child and would have avoided the hard grueling life her and Ariel led thereafter.
- Ariel leaving his wife to fight in the battle. This mans wife is nearly expecting to have a child which he himself calls his future, yet he is more than ready to give that all up to risk his life as a foot soldier for a regime which is made clear to be the wrong side of the fight throughout the movie. Usually in a movie if your main character is going to risk their life in battle it should be for something, not at its behest.
Speaking of Ariel leaving, Ariel's ability to leave right before something horrible happens to those he loves most is so timely that it borders on comedic. Whether its leaving Maquia to join the army only for her to be kidnapped minutes later or leaving his wife to fight in the army right before she goes into labor Ariel has a knack for leaving his loved ones when they need it most. For a character whose desires are to be there to protect the ones he loves, he fails at it in the worst ways possible every time.

Pacing:
The last major issue I had with this movie was the pacing. For a movie that covers such a long period of time with a large cast of characters spanning many locations to work the pacing must be effective. This movie fails to do so. Often times I found myself wondering where or when I was at in this stories large world due to the seemingly random cuts in it. These cuts prevent us as an audience from knowing much if anything at all about characters feelings or motivations behind the actions we see them participating in. This is a major error which took greatly away from the flow of the film.

In the end I feel there was lots of room for potential in this story. The world building and animation were incredible and the narrative was quite touching. If PA Works had instead decided to make this story into a TV show with more time to develop their characters and fill in the story I am sure we would have been left with a far greater final product.