Wow, what a movie. I was truly engaged the whole time, and personally, that's a big thing. I went into this move with 0 knowledge on who made it, the plot, the characters or even have seeing pictures or footage from it. The only thing I knew previously about this movie, was that it was pretty highly regarded by the anime community, and in Japan in general. Look, I'm not the most eloquent and proficient reviewer (not even a reviewer at all) but I'm going to jot down some reasons why I enjoyed this movie so much.
From the beginning, I had a pretty clear idea what the main plot point of this movie was going to be, though this was presented though subtle character movements and cleverly placed character shots that would switch back and forward from the two main characters. The story progressed nicely and shared nice insights into both characters lives and how their interactions affected one another, which at times were delivered with a genuinely funny and realistic sense of humour. The dedicated segments to both of the main characters barely lagged or felt like they went on for too long, which kept my interest focused.
Another admirable thing about this movie, was the way that it invoked emotions from the watchers, specifically how it showed some pretty devastating emotional situations the characters went through, but avoided cheesy anime tropes to portray them. In a way, the emotional aspects of this movie were reminiscent of live action romantic drama films.
Can we talk about the beautiful artwork in this film? Specifically, the background art. It was clear a lot of detail went into the artwork and at time it left me speechless. At times though, however, the characters somewhat resembled characters from Studio Ghibli movies, which isn't really a complaint, and more of an observation.
The ending section of this movie was fantastic, particularly how it gave the characters a purpose to reverse what had previously happened to them (you know what I mean), which created a sense of tension that wasn't too overdone.
Anyway, thanks for reading this vague and rushed "review".
