Story (3)
I do understand that everyone enjoys a different type of story. Some prefer drama, some prefer action, and some prefer science-fiction, and the rest like other types of stories.
If you had to ask me what type of a story Nerawareta Gakuen is, I am not even sure where to begin. There is the romance, the science-fiction element, a fair share of drama, and just pure slice of life moments without ever being funny. As a romance-drama story, it could do away with the complicated time-travelling superpower back story. As a science-fiction, it suffers from melodrama and deficiency of plot structure. As a school slice-of-life story, there is not even a slice of comedy.
Anyways, no matter how we define this movie, one thing is for sure. By the end of the viewing experience, I bet most of us viewers did not understand what-the-fuck happened in the movie. The story might made sense in the more detailed story-telling of the original science-fiction novel, it sure did not make any sense here.
One thing that the production team screwed up worse than the story itself is the pacing. The painful experience of watching this movie is like watching a slug moving across the road. Individual preferences differ significantly with pacing, but I dare to say the majority of viewers will agree with me.
Art (8)
Artwork is very well-done in this movie. I really like the emphasis on the various scenes where sakura petals fall from the sky. The animation is also pretty good. Highlight include Natsuki's complicated gymnastic maneuvers whenever she appears on screen. Strangely enough, the art in this movie didn't really do anything for the story as a whole, unlike perhaps in Makoto Shinkai's 5cm per second. Put it this way. You could spend 2 million dollors on animating a person walking from point A to point B, making it looks gorgeous. However, in the end it would still just be the a person walking from point A to point B, no matter what kind of elaborate background you draw.
Sound (7)
I wanted to give a higher score for the sound, but the truth is, the only outstanding part about it is the OP, which is a no-brainer really because it's done by Supercell. The sound tracks, if there were any, did not do anything for me, nor was it particularly bad. Hanazawa Kana's voice acting could be identified at the first minute of the movie, but her performance in this work is mediocre. Just mediocre.
Character (6)
Overall, the characters weren't bad, nor were they particularly interesting people to watch. I really don't want to comment too much on the characters because I feel like in this show, whether or not viewers like these characters would very much be subjected to viewer's whimsical discretion. Though, no matter how good a character is, he would just be dull in a dull story.
Enjoyment (3)
The first five minutes of listening to Supercell's Giniro Hikousen gave me hope. The next hour extinguished most of my unrealistic expectation. I did not particularly liked or disliked the ending, since I was already desensitized to this movie at that point. I was just glad that the producers decided to play the last minute of Giniro Hikousen at the last minute of the show.
Overall (3.5)
I finally know why this movie was ranked at #1882 (Nov 6, 2014). I wouldn't personally recommend this movie to any of my friend.
