It took me on a rollercoaster of feels and tears. The plot, the sound, the art, the characters and the cinematography, they all took my breath away. I had a myriad of feelings from every aspect of this film. I highly recommend just forgetting reading reviews if you haven’t seen it, as this gold deserves not to be spoiled. However, since you are here, I'm going to write one and make sure you damn see it. Don’t worry~ it's spoiler free ;)
Art: Charming. From just the opening sequences my heart jumped in excitement. The colour Makoto Shinkai brings to his films are unlike any other. You can see how much work went into every aspect of this film, but especially the art. The scenery was mind-blowingly artistic and beautiful, creating a beautiful esthetic. Crisp and utterly beautiful. I especially loved how the scenery and art were used. The cinematography at points was like a drug to me. Such beautiful animation should be illegal.
BTW: For those who have seen a lot of anime of similar genre, the art may look very familiar. The character designer was Takana Masayoshi also known for the design of AnoHana and Ano Natsu De Matteru. Indeed this only just added to the charm (and also the feelz).
Characters: Somehow Makoto Shinkai made these beautiful loving characters through what seemed to be very little scene time. By about 30 min in I already LOVED the characters and their qualities. Sure, I would have loved to see more but within a movie like this a director doesn’t usually have that much connection time to establish such colourful characters within such a complex plot. Yet Makoto Shinkai managed to do it (claps). Movies like this usually have such rushed character development and I was really worried coming into this movie that this movie would fall under such category, however, this movie delivered way more than asked.
Plot: I really don’t want to spoil this. Seriously. But what seems to be quite a simple premise is just SO MUCH MORE. Adding to the gold, the plot and story are just magnificent. New and original, quite unpredictable, the plot grabs you and takes you. Literally takes you on a journey. Reading the synopsis you may think that this is a typical romance movie with a slight twist. It really isn’t! its romance but it doesn’t have the sort of cliché you are thinking of. I love seeing such original content such as this, really warms my heart.
Sound: I feel that a lot of people may not 100% enjoy this aspect of the movie as it actually played quite a large role. However saying that I'm not one of those people. For me, it added to the feels and the enjoyment of the film. It was seriously beautiful and fit perfectly with the aesthetic of the film. There were points within the film where I was like “oh okay… music” as it was quite abrupt however overall it added to the film.
Overall this movie takes the cake. All the cake. From every aspect, it was just beautiful. Sure you might think this is going to be a typical rom-com however it really isn’t. I full heartedly say: watch this movie! From day one, after seeing the trailers and poster art, I knew this movie was going to be gold (and it was). Freaking beautiful.
