It's masterfully directed in visual and audio aspects. They managed to make a distinction between real and virtual not just by using colours - they changed soundscape, framing of the shots, animation and many things more. Virtual world is not just shown differently - viewer feels the distinction.
And even brushing differences between world aside - overall scene composition is marvellous. They easily envoke emotions with visuals alone and find great ways at conveying a large amount of information in a fast way.
I just can't stop being amazed at visual and audio direction.
The story is quite simple, but heartfeltly delivered. I got tear eyed at the final song.
Now for the reasons why it's not a 10 as I wished it to be - the virtual world itself.
While it's beautifully realised - there is no logic. Not with how you enter it and what happens outside while you are inside, or that there are for some reason fistfights inside and it somehow works. You can carp at it's design at every angle and discover more and more faults.
I wish there at least weren't any fights. Saving grace is how rare they happen (two or three short ones). Antagonist during those fights is nothing to write home about either. He's boring in every aspect; some of which were obviously intentional, but boring nonetheless. His overall unimportance mitigates that a bit, thankfully.
If you look past virtual's world lack of logic - you'll find a heartfelt story told with astonishing directorial mastery. I wish it was a 10.
