SPOILERS AHEAD:
Knowing Shinkai, I was wondering if he was gonna pull a meta twist on this one, and he kinda did, and it was awesome. In both his other serious works that I've seen, they kinda left me depressed and empty in the end, and it's something I disliked about them. It usually aims at deep feels about how painful and/or pointless real life can be for the simplest of reasons. They really succeed at expressing the depressed state of mind in an artistic way. So going into this, we'd kinda expect things to not go very great for the characters, and that Titanic sinks in the end, but here, even though there is that same Shinkai feel throughout, the end just manages to tease the hell out of the viewer already familiar with his work. And it's so successful exactly because knowing it could go either way helps the immersion, and the viewer is more invested in the characters, as characters feel less safe. We usually expect good endings, so whatever happens doesn't matter that much since we know it'll turn around somehow, so we're just waiting to see how exactly. But here, knowing Shinkai, it's simply not the case, and definitely made the difference. Other than that, the ending emotional rollercoaster was spot on in every way, all the beats hit fully and perfectly, and on top of that everything felt real and honest.
