This is my first review, so it's probably really bad. But I just had to write it seeing that the other reviews right now are praising this pile of trash.
As a Date A Live fan, this was a movie I was patiently waiting for for over a year now, and I finally got to watch it yesterday. Now I want my time and money back.
STORY - 2
Date A Live so far has been: girl appears, Shidou intervenes, Shidou and said girl's relationship develops, girl's powers are sealed, repeat. This was a formula that has actually worked so far in the series and it was actually quite enjoyable to watch. But despite the name of the movie being Mayuri Judgement, only the last twenty minutes or so of the movie was actually dedicated to Mayuri. The first half of the movie involved going on dates one by one with every girl other than Mayuri, and throughout the movie it felt as though Mayuri was just a background character in what was supposed to be a story arc dedicated to her. Not only this, the vast majority of the movie was fanservice catering to fans of the series and also included many scenes which only serve to remind you of events that occurred in the two seasons of the anime. In the twenty minutes or so of actual plot, everything happens so suddenly that you can't make any sense of why any of this is going on in the first place. Not only that, the story of this movie is completely ignorable and it was written in such a way that it has no significance to the actual story of the series as a whole. It felt like it was merely an extended spin-off OVA. What you'd expect from a theatrical movie release is completely non-existent here.
ART - 5
The low budget of the movie is easily shown by the art and visuals of the movie. While the transformation sequences looked pretty nice and the CG in the final battle was top notch, everything else looked below subpar.
SOUND - 9
I would give this a 10 if not for the absolutely horrid song in the beginning of the movie. The background music is lovely and as expected from Date A Live and fits very well in context to what is going on at the time. I've been listening to the soundtrack pretty much all day since I watched the movie. The ending song Invisible Date is absolutely wonderful.
CHARACTER - 5
The main girl of the movie (Mayuri, as it was SUPPOSED to be), barely got any screen time at all. The character development between Shidou and her and also her character could have been fleshed out in the 72 minutes that the movie ran for but since she only actually spoke to Shidou in the last 20 minutes or so, it felt extremely forced and rushed, and her character ended up being pretty much a blank canvas with a bunch of words quickly written over it. As for the other characters, we have the same old characters from the anime so it's pretty self-explanatory.
ENJOYMENT - 6
There were some pretty enjoyable and really funny scenes throughout the movie, not going to lie. The entire ordeal of Shiori was absolutely hilarious. But everything that was supposed to be relevant to the plot was terrbily done. I'd give it a 3 or 4 if not for the enjoyable comedy in this movie.
OVERALL - 5 (rounded down from 5.4)
Honestly, I'm probably just salty over how it's called MAYURI Judgement but I got anything but Mayuri. Here's hoping it was just a quick cash grab for a proper season three.
