Having finished watching Fireworks, I inmediately checked all the reviews and I'm relieved at the fact that I wasn't the only one who got dissapointed and underwhelmed. I'll try to make this as quick as possible.
Story: 3/10
Fireworks tries to implement both the romance and drama genre into a single piece of work, but unfortunately fails drastically. As a drama, it just isn't sad or emotional enough; hardly one or two scenes can be centered in a gloomy atmosphere, but that's about it. Fireworks tries to make us get into the characterization, but the characters aren't characterized enough. Now you would expect that having failed at being a drama this show would be a GREAT romance anime... yeah no. The only "romantic" scenes are just not deepened enough, making this feeling quickly fade away in just a matter of seconds. Don't get me wrong, the last scene can be pretty and all, but you can't excuse having dissapointed a whole audience with just the ending. You need the memorable moments to last an hour and a half, not just 3 minutes.
Art: 9/10
What did you expect? It's a fucking Shaft movie, you would expect it to be absolutely mindblowing. And, at least in this category, it really is. Now I'm talking about the artstyle here, NOT the animation. The animation can be a little sloppy and poor, making the empathy between the audience and the characters hard to happen. But art-wise, this movie is great.
Sound: 9/10
Just as you would have imagined after watching the questionably popular music video, this movie excels at pleasing us with music. The end song is just to good to forget, and Nazuna's singing is one of the most beatiful scenes in this movie. I promised to be quick, so let's move on.
Character: 1/10
This is the biggest flaw Firework has, and the main cause of our inmense dissapoinment. This movie might me a loyal contendent for the prize "Best making your characters feel like a miserable piece of cardboard". I'm not even joking here; there is not a single hint of character development in the whole story. And I don't think you realize how important character development really is. Failing miserably at even presenting our protagonists, the movie just went downhill from there. You have no clue of what the characters feel towards each other, asides from literally them yelling who they are in love with. I honestly believe that if this movie had good characterization and personalization, it would be at least a decent movie, but sadly that is not the case.
Enjoyment: 6/10
Even though the movie has it's great downsides, it still perfoms a decent job at entertaining the audience. Maybe some people will disagree with this, but I didn't really find the movie boring, just far-fetched and superficial in terms of personalization. The best moment of the movie was, in my opinion, the final scene; it was just really heart-warming and pleasing. I won't go into detail so that nobody gets spoiled. But yeah, overall, I'll give it an average score at entertaining.
Overall: 6/10
I honestly wouldn't have imagined I would give this "low" of a score to a Shaft movie, but I guess this is the one the story deserves. I really don't think it's a BAD movie, just, as I said previously, dissapointing. This is the reason I'm giving it an above-average score; this movie is somewhat fine if you don't know about the hype that existed before it's publication. The only thing I have left to say is: Go watch it... Just don't get your hopes high.
