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Uchiage Hanabi is a self explanatory title. The movie is about fireworks. For a simple man, this movie could be good since the firework scenes are beautiful. But, if this movie is watched for its plot or theme, it is truly confusing.

Art: The animation itself is not bad, but there are so many aspects of it that irritates the eye. CGI is overused and unnatural throughout the movie. The bike scenes are all weird looking, the 50 meter swimming race looks awkward, the general plans seem incoherent with themselves. A quick glance would be enough to see the alarming awkwardness when the computer is used. ...

Also, the movie does not feel detailed. The background has blurry parts to hide the lack of fineness, the facial expression are awkward sometimes since the artists and the director may not have studied them attentively, some elements feel just unrefined.

However, they did get the fireworks well. Every time the fireworks light up in the sky, the art aspect of the movie gets carried up a little bit. The colors were vibrant, the lighting was credible, every part of the firework exploding was present and faithful to realistic fireworks or voluntarily modified.

The lighting coming from the landscape was also amazing. The sunset was orange and lighted the inside of the train wagon. The lighthouse was bright and unlighted the dark night. The fireworks reflected on the characters accompanied with a surprised expression added some cinematographic feeling to the movie.

In short, some of the art was bad yet some of it was great which makes an average of good.

Sound: The song uchiage hanabi received 442 million views which tells a lot about the music of the movie. The voice actors were great as well and conveyed the right emotions when the visual aspect did not. The insert songs excepted the latter were also beautiful and Nazuna's voice actress sung great in the train. The only problem with the music is that it was not used at the perfect moment. In fact, the famous "Uchiage Hanabi" song was at the end when the credits were rolling but it could have been used during the climax or the ending instead of a sober looking credit accompanying track.

Character: The character did not show interesting characteristics. the protagonist literally has no interesting characteristics while Nazuna (the girl) could be described with one sentence: a girl who wants to run away from her mom. The characters were not deep and showed no development.

Story: Now, this could have saved the movie but it worsened it. At first glance, the story is surely confusing and the movie never could've become a mainstream insanely popular movie. there are so many aspects of the movie that have not been explained at all like the glass ball that seems to change worlds and show the potential things that could have happened in any of those worlds.

We definitely feel that there is some kimi no na wa elements in it yet it is less clearly presented. Moreover, the pseudo-science in it with the timelines and the alternative worlds gives a steins;gate vibe without the first 12 episodes to set the scene.

The plot was definitely not thoroughly planned which leaves many questions unanswered. Yet, we could still make hypotheses about a theme. It could be: we look for the perfect partner yet we are never going to find him or her one can never run away from fate, so just live your life. Anyways these are only speculation and no theme seems satisfying enough. These two could be formulated because the protagonist never actually succeeds in living with the girl forever like in fairy tales. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, Nazuna always ends up disappearing from his life.

In short, the plot is either really deep or it is truly really confusing and the makers of the anime do not even understand the source work or the latter could just be horrible, anyways there are missing pieces to this puzzle and this is never good for a plot.

Overall: This a an acceptable anime movie. The animation part was stunning sometimes, other times it was mediocre, The sound is surely the best part of the movie and it is even more famous than the movie itself. The story and the characters could be either good or dreadful depending on how you look at it but it is undeniably not great. this movie is a roller coaster with little highs and big downs. I would still recommend it, but don't have high expectations or take it seriously.

The art style of Violet Evergarden is breathtaking. That was the lasting impression this anime left on me. I can't not think of one character whose appearance was sloppy. Everyone was so carefully designed with rich details. That doesn't mean that there wasn't anyone bad-looking as a character, but even the people who were not supposed to be beautiful got careful attention from the production team.

The most unique aspect of the characters were their eyes. They must be the best looking eyes I've seen in any anime. One reason why they were so sophisticated might be that the eye color of the major is ... something recurrent in the anime. Because of the importance of this element in the story of violet Evergarden, special attention was accorded to it. Anyways, the end result is stunning.

The landscape was also so bewitching that the viewer felt immersed in the world of Violet Evergarden. The story is based on a fictional continent, but the cityscape corresponded almost perfectly to some German cities to a point that leaves no place for doubt: Violet Evergarden's setting is in Germany. I feel that Germany if less taboo in a way in Japan since they've been allies in the past and even though horrible things happened in the past, every country must have something fascinating in its culture and it deserves to be exhibited in some form of art.

Violet Evergarden definitely changed my vision of what Germany looked like since pretty much the only time I've heard of Germany here in Canada is when we talked about WWII and all the 'bad' things they did. Anyways, the setting of Violet Evergarden is quite faithful to reality with a touch of brighter colors which makes it absolutely beautiful.

Moreover, the exploitation of time lapses was ingenious. A time lapse is made with pictures taken with an interval that can be regular of adjusted by the photographer but the end result is a fusion of all the pictures which makes some sort of accelerated animation. Obviously, it is more often used in live action movies and often more artistic ones. However, Violet Evergarden's production team took the initiative and created realistic and pertinent time lapses with great attention to details with the shadows the slight movement caused by wind, the clouds, the star trails, the growth of a fruit. I can tell that they had an experienced artistic photographer in their team that really enhanced the visual aspect of the anime.

In short, Violet Evergarden is a picturesque anime with great music accompanying the protagonist's path towards the understanding of emotions and notably love. (I know I only talked about the art but the rest is also great) Anyone who likes emotional animes and the visual aspect of it must give it a watch.

I've heard people qualifying Anohana as "cry porn". I must admit that they aren't wrong, there is truly so much sad stuff in it: the death of the girl, her friend's struggles with grief, the rest of her family coping with it, the melancholic music... It is definitely one of the most emotional animes out there, so if you're looking for something that can make big chads cry, then you're looking at the right place.

However, this anime is not only about mixing the most depressing stuff together and feeding that weird soup (or smoothie I don't know) to the viewer for him or her to ... shed tears. In fact, the story is inspired of the actual life of the author who published her biography later. Nobody would write about something so close and important to them casually without great attention to detail right? The subjects touched in this anime are major: grief, childhood, friendship and family.

I feel the maker of Anohana is telling childhood friends to stick together, because you're never gonna make closer and stronger bonds than with them. And we see that the only way they can live with the death of Menma on their shoulders is by coming back together and confronting the issue together.

The presence of Menma seems real in the anime and the protagonist really wants to prove it, but the maker is clearly trying to show that Menma (and her death) are on their minds, and that Jinta (the protagonist) cannot get over it at all. The others start by acting as if he was mad, but he continued telling them Menma was there -- in their minds as well. They denied it and pretended to have forgotten about it, but they were only hiding from the truth. Instead of confronting it, they ran from it, but they could not outrun it.

In fact, none of them truly accepted the death of their childhood friend and we see it quite clearly in the anime with the actions and the thoughts of the other characters. Then, they finally reunited and decided to confront the problem together. This brings me to the second potential message: To be able to live on despite grief (especially one following an accidental death) the people who are affected must help each other and reunite to treat the wound left by a loved one.

Only then, they might be able to close this painful lesion, which does not mean that there won't be a scar there for a very long time. In fact, I don't think that it's possible to stay the same after such an event and forget. It is utterly impossible, yet they must continue living and functioning at 100%.

Now disclaimer time: I'm not qualified to write professional reviews or anything and maybe I'm not understanding the full depth of this anime, but I hope I did a decent job that was not too superficial. Also, the fact that there might/must be a deeper more complete meaning to it only makes me think of Anohana more highly since most commercial anime and TV shows are really not that deep.

Finally, let's finish with a quick summary following the MAL guidelines.
Story: the story is well written, meaning there is an evolution that happens at a pace that allows good understanding without putting to much useless details that waste time. There is no problem in the logic or any plot armor since it is not a shonen or anything anyways and the show ends soon after the climax following a rise. Really, there is nothing superfluous in the plot and yet it is not ridiculously simple either. Everything comes together perfectly at the end which makes it a great plot.

Art: the vivid color palette makes the show really lively, which is reasonable since the anime talks about live (ironically not the opposite). I remember some great animation for some scenes as well (no spoilers though). The background was also very detailed and realistic.

Sound: the ending theme is just so emotional. Even now, I still feel a pinch in my heart when I listen to it again. The melancholic piano or guitar music accompanying the story really enhances the tone of the anime. The voice acting was really well done too, they had two sets of actors for the children version and the adult version and included some real talented people who are now big names in the anime industry. The ending theme was also sung by them, which shows that they are not only great voice actors but great singers too.

Character: I won't even say anything but the characters have some serious development and the anime is really about their inner growth so I won't spoil anything.

Enjoyment: Well, this is subjective but Anohana changed my vision and my taste in anime. i

Overall: It is great anime. Period. It is not perfect, since such thing doesn't exist, but I am not entitled to criticize it with my inexistent level of expertise. However, I heard people say that it is too romantic and I totally understand it. I feel 9 is the best score I could give any anime in a serious review right now, so Anohana is pretty much a perfect score in my eyes.

I hope that you will either watch this anime who just celebrated its 10th anniversary or that you enjoyed reading my cringy review.

Steins;gate is great. Period.

I noticed this anime on the most popular and best rated animes on MAL a couple of months ago. Since it's not exactly new or ongoing, I hadn't heard a lot about it. The key visual's art style didn't look that great, I thought that it must be a sci-fi anime without much actual science logic and depth to it.

I still gave it a go 2 months ago. This show is notorious for its slow ass start and it is true that the first couple of episodes are boring. The plot does not move forward a lot and there is much more ... description than action. I hate to admit it, but I kinda dropped it and didn't plan to pick it up again. Honestly, if the first 12 episodes were grouped in an individual season it would be a 6 out of 10-ish anime.

Then, school ended and summer came. I had more free time than usual and I heard that steins;gate has a slow start but that the second half is amazing. I finally decided to pick it up again since I had gone through the slow start already and it was a great decision of my life (nah but u know...) I read a summary of the 7 first episodes I watched to remind me clearly of the story.

I am not going to spoil the story but the first half of the anime was definitely necessary to set the scene for the rest. The story is PERFECT. I don't think I have ever read or saw a plot as well written as this one. Everything starts as a scrambled puzzle and it ended with the last piece that fits perfectly and solves the puzzle. The story is the core element of the show that makes it so great.

The characters cannot be described with one word nor good or evil. The music or the absence of it excepted for the insect chirps really accentuated the atmosphere of the moment. I am not a big fan of thrillers because I'm not good at handling the anxiety and I often tend to look at spoilers to make sure there's no jumpscares or anything... but steins;gate really blew my mind.

I honestly think that every anime fan should watch this show. It definitely think it merits it's popularity and critical. The story is so well-written that Steins;gate is clearly one of the best animes of the past decade and a new classic.

The first half of the special episode is a recap of the last 12 episodes, which could be skipped at that point. The second half does not explain much about the show and leaves the viewer still confused. Wonder egg priority is definitely not a normal anime meant to be enjoyed by a wide audience. I feel I might lack the knowledge necessary to understand it or maybe the delivery was confusing for everyone, including the Japanese audience, although I do not think it refers to much Japanese culture either. Anyways, I did not particularly enjoy the special episode. This ruins a bit the rest ... of the show for me because I felt a lot of potential in it but there is no clear message or satisfying ending.

The story is complex and well written. It explores relevant and serious themes. The animation is really good but there are movies with better animation especially considering the movie is not that old. The music was really average there was nothing memorable. I listen to a lot of anime music but I never heard of the opening. However the main theme is pretty good. The characters are complicated and the whole story revolve on their development. Needless to say here, the characters are really well written and perfectly presented in the movie. I did enjoy that movie a lot, there are elements in it that ... were relatable in some way even though everything in the movie is more intense than in my life. I definitely feel the movie was not mere entertainment but more than that. Overall it was a great animated movie however i did not give it a perfect score because there I did not enjoy it at 100% but if I did i would have give it a 10 out of 10 for sure.