I never had such a mixed review like this one. I found this movie on Netflix, and I was interested in it because of the art. Recently I heard the film's theme song "Uchiage Hanabi" and it also got me interested in watching it, since I really liked the song. Anyway, my expectations for this movie weren't high due to the fact that I knew almost nothing about the story and there were no familiar names involved in it. So I gave it a try, and I was... confused during the majority of the film's length.
I understood what was happening, but I was thinking "where is the story going to now?". It went back and forth, jumping in time and it got weird and psychedelic during some scenes. It was hard to tell if what was happening was real or some sort of dream. All in all, the climax of the story is nothing extraordinary and there is no plot-twist to explain the weirdness of the narrative. It turns out to be another romance story.
As I said before, the art of this film got me interested in watching it, and it didn't disappoint in that aspect. There were some scenes that were very well animated, and the overall look of the art style was appealing to my eyes. But it got ruined with the overuse of CGI and the weird compositing with the backgrounds in some scenes. There are moments where the entirety of the scene is animated with some weird CGI, and it threw me off.
Again, I liked the theme song, and the rest of the soundtrack is good too, maybe the best part of the entire film. I have not much to add to this aspect, not an excellent or outstanding soundtrack, but it was nice.
None of the characters were appealing to me and they were kind of annoying throughout the film. The main characters were kinda flat and there was no backstory that made me interested in them, especially the main guy. The rest of the cast are just arguing all the time about "are the fireworks flat or round?" and it gets annoying pretty quickly.
I don't like giving bad reviews or low scores, so I'll give it a mixed score. I didn't hate it or consider it a bad film, but I didn't enjoy it either. If you are into romance mixed with sci-fi/supernatural themes and you want to watch it, I won't try to change your mind, but don't get your expectations too high.