This movie had the components to become a good or great work: art style, basic story line idea, basic character ideas.
But after half the movie or a little more it turned around and went wrong.
Art
I like the art style. First I read the synopsis and thought it might be a serious anime, especially using the word "drama". Then I looked at the art and thought, that probably won't be so, because it looks rather cartoonish/child-like.
Story
As you can take from the synopsis, it was supposed to be about Ginga's training (and occurrences on the way) to become the Emperor's First Wife (yes, they can have a lot more..).
And that's what sounded interesting to me. And in the first half it made the appearance as if that was what was happening.
Then sudden jumps in the time/line happened, supposedly first several months passed (which you can assume from one particular scene they show, which is confusing at first), then they say already x month passed. And I had absolutely no feeling that more than a short amount of time passed and nothing really changed. The characters behaved the same, there didn't seem to be any progress. Just suddenly the training was over and then the story suddenly shifted to drama. To a serious note. Yet somehow, during those serious situations and happenings, they included cartoonish scenes and happenings which just made me think that the characters must be very dumb to behave that way in those situations. It just didn't fit together at all.
Also at that point they seemed to rush and compress the story. Things happened that I didn't expect at all and that didn't really make sense.
And at the end, the characters acted like nothing mattered or really happened..
Sound
I didn't really pay attention to the sound that much. What I noticed from the beginning, though, was Ginga's voice. It sounded weird. Later on I noticed that they might have picked that voice for her so she could later, as Empress, sound more mature.
Also the ending music. I found it horrible, not fitting, and in addition to the ending of the story it felt a bit as if they pierced my heart with a knife..
Characters
The characters were rather unrealistic. Ginga seemed too mature (her conversation with her father) from the start, and how she didn't react at all to provocations from Seshamin was really unrealistic. I couldn't at all make out what kind of person she is and why she acts the way she does. Same goes for other characters. I kept switching between liking them and not caring about them. Because their personalities seemed to switch from behavior that made sense and that didn't. One character, for example, seemed to be wise and intelligent, and then suddenly he does really stupid stuff (cartoonish style).
Enjoyment
Well, at the beginning I thought it could be a great movie, like I said. But then after that half my enjoyment kept going down and then at the end I was really disappointed, especially when the ending (music) came and I was like "What the heck was their intention? To stab people even more after that ending?"
Overall
Overall it went down to the score 5 for me, there were still some aspects that I liked.
