Story:
The narrative is pretty simple. Shun is a novelist. He meets a young man named Mio who spends a lot of time sitting on a bench staring out at the sea. The pair strikes up an awkward conversation that leads to feelings starting to develop. Mio leaves the area to finish school only to return a couple years later with a startling announcement. He wants to be Shun's boyfriend. The film then follows their blossoming romance.
There's one major flaw to the narrative of this film. One singular element that not only makes the film very difficult to recommend, but is also kind of infuriating. I'm actually going to go into spoiler territory here to discuss it. So, if you don't want spoilers just know that the film does a bad towards the end and skip the rest of this paragraph. For the rest of you I have some ranting to do. So, towards the end Shun's childhood friend, Sakurako, arrives to try and bring Shun home because his father is sick and his family needs him. There's just one fundamental problem with this. His family shunned him and cast him out for being gay. The film never shows any remorse from his parents nor does it give us any reason to believe they've changed in any way but we're expected to believe that he should "be a good son" and return. Personally, I find this mentality more than a little infuriating. I've met plenty of LGBT people who have gone through similar circumstances with families who want nothing to do with them after finding out until they need money or transplants or other help of some kind and then, suddenly, they're willing to let the LGBT person back into their life and they'll only be a little passive aggressively toxic towards them. And a lot of media, this film included, perpetuates the narrative that the LGBT people should be the better human beings and offer their assistance because they have a "social obligation." Fuck that noise. The social obligation that's being brought up is a two way street. Your family treats you well and helps take care of you then you do the same for them. The moment they cast you aside, they've broken that goddamn social contract and you don't owe them shit and trying to be the bigger person usually only results in the LGBT person being subjected to a toxic mentality from their families that's terrible for their mental health. Shun shouldn't even be considering returning without a damn good reason to believe his parents have changed their ways and to have it be treated as something we want him to do just buys into toxic ideas that are bad for the community.
With that out the way, there are positive elements to the story as well. The whole exploration of love between two young men where one feels jaded and has been conditioned to think of his love as impossible and one is discovering his latent bisexuality is pretty compelling and well handled. The thematic connection where each of them has lost their parents in different senses is interesting. The development of their relationship is well executed and it contains plenty of sweet moments. The juxtaposition of flashbacks that led them to this moment is used very cleverly to add some depth as well.
Characters:
Mio and Shun are pretty interesting, complex characters with a lot of back story. The film also does a good job of giving the side characters just enough complexity that they have verisimilitude without taking too much focus. The worst characters are Shun's parents who are just the typical morons who act like their child's sexuality is a personal sleight. We've seen it in a lot of media and it'll keep popping up.
Art:
The artwork looks really nice. The character designs are strong. The nature backgrounds are detailed and look quite pretty.
Sound:
Murata Taishi and Matsuoka Yoshitsugu both deliver very strong performances. The side character actors do a solid job as well. The music is nice.
Ho-yay:
In addition to our main couple, there's a lesbian couple and Mio has a conversation with an older gay man to try and figure out Shun's reluctance to enter a relationship.
Areas of Improvement:
1. Shun's parents need to express remorse of some kind. For the ending of the film to work, we need to see something that indicates that they understand that they acted poorly and see some desire to make up for it. Otherwise it's just infuriating.
2. The film would benefit from taking a little more time to extrapolate on Shun and Mio's pasts. Yes, we do get a good glimpse into it but it's very abridged.
3. We could also use a little more of Shun and Mio's relationships with the side characters.
Final Thoughts:
This film does do a lot right as a romance. It has a compelling main relationship. It explores some LGBT issues pretty well. Yet, in spite of all that, it's very difficult to recommend. Because the whole handling of Shun's relationship with his parents, especially how it pertains to the ending, is pretty infuriatingly tone deaf and just genuinely bad. And, because of that, I'm going to give the film a 6/10. I'm actually tempted to go lower because of just how egregious its major narrative problem is but I did genuinely like most of the film.
