The plot is stupid. Half of the time I didn't even know what was going on. It starts of as a sort of slice of life, school romance with a touch of sci-fi but and then moves into weird territory concerning cellphones (and their banning), psychic powers, time travel and a troubling dictatorship subplot. And the characters, my god, don't get me started.
There's the dull and boring main character, the life-long best friend neighbour girl (who, obviously, has a crush on the main character), there's the best friend of the neighbour girl (who the main character, obviously, has a crush on, leaving the neighbour girl jealous for half the movie) and then finally there's the mysterious (Nagisa Kaworu clone) transfer student that the best friend of the neighbour girl, obviously, falls in love with and thus creating a love triangle (love quadrangle?). As you may have noticed, the plot is very obvious.
But then you start to notice something. The art and animation. It's beautiful. Well, the backgrounds that is. The character design themselves look like you just straight-up copied whatever you found under the google search "anime character", but the art, from the 2D backgrounds to the 3D water, look amazing. But then there's the thing with the animation that caught my attention. It doesn't look right. It'd look great if it was an action movie, because the characters are always jumping around and wailing their arms about utilizing a neat (but disorienting) motion-blur technique, but it's not an action movie. And then there's also the excessive use of lens flares and colorful special effects that is definitely not needed.
It's also obvious that they recorded the voices after the initial animation because the mouths are almost never in sync. It makes for an unpleasant experience.
It's as if the movie tried too hard to look and sound like a Makoto Shinkai movie that it ultimately forgot what the movie was about. It's obvious that more time was spent on the art and animation than the story itself, which is good in some cases, like Ghost in the Shell and The Sky Crawlers, but in this case it flat-out doesn't work. There's just too much dialogue and too much jabbering about with the story for that Mamoru Oshii approach to work.
My final verdict is, if you're looking for cool new computer wallpapers, then you've hit the jackpot. But if you're looking for something cohesive with a good story and interesting characters, you're better off with the jokes you find on the opposite end of a popsicle stick.
SPOILER: THE CELLPHONE IS IN HIS SWIMMING TRUNKS.
