~ Story 6/10
Adult Naomi's story is fleshed out here. We get to see his feelings for Ruri grow in his youth, and then his turmoil and emotional hollowness as he goes into adulthood.
It sounds great on paper. Unfortunately in reality, it's just not very interesting separated from the movie.
If you watch this before the movie, you will be very confused. If you watch this after the movie, you will feel like the emotional development came too late. The ideal situation would have been to have the heartfelt moments from this ONA inserted where they belong in the film. The story would have been much stronger.
Even if this ONA was meant to be an extended trailer of sorts for the film, the scenes should still have been integrated into the main story somehow.
~ Animation 3/10
There is a huge chunk of this ONA that is just still images with voice-overs or even just silence with text on screen. I thought the point of 3D CGI was to streamline the animation process, but I guess the budget was just too tight.
The sepia tone + vignette was pretty corny and unnecessary. The voice over narration was already enough to make it clear that these are Naomi's memories.
~ Character 8/10 ------------SPOILERS----------
This ONA does what the film should have done for the characters.
Unfortunately, since these emotional scenes were put into a spin-off instead of the film, Ruri's in-film personality is practically blank.
For example, her fear of heights in the movie is reduced to 2 gags (falling off the stepladder & almost falling out of the car). Her attempt to overcome her fear in order to go visit the mountains with Naomi should have been in the movie. The final reveal that she was the little crow would have been much more rewarding. The girl who was afraid of heights flew through the skies to save her loved one. It's hard to pick up this touching detail from the movie alone.
Another example is the scene of her singing in the library when she thinks no one else is listening. In the movie, she goes from aloof to 'love of my life' for Naomi in no time at all. This one little scene of Naomi catching her with her guard down would have done wonders for their relationship to go from strangers to friends.
Naomi himself would have benefited greatly from the character development shown here. The way we get to see his unhealthy obsessive lifestyle while trying to find a way to bring Ruri back would have made his final sacrifice in the movie so much more touching. In the movie we only see the "exciting" scenes where he fails at experiments over and over. We didn't get these quiet moments where he's sitting in his empty apartment, not taking care of his health, shutting out the world, unable to function. Even him trying to care for a cat only to have it confiscated without a fight was great insight on his state of mind.
On a lesser scale, the research team would have been more lovable in the movie if they had the comedic moments shown in this ONA, along with seeing more of their relationship with Naomi.
~ Overall 6/10
I'm glad this spin-off exists to bring more depth into the characters, but it just doesn't work separated from the movie.
