If you are fellow enjoyer of women with red hair then Quintessential Quintuplets should be the Anime for you. For a lot of people it is ... or I can imagine it used to be until they saw the movie and the conclusion of the series. I have had some hopes for the movie as I was positively surprised by the second season but unfortunately the movie didn't live up to my expectations.
As a heads up: I will be using the term "true heroine" from here on. For those unfamiliar with the term: The "True heroine" is the girl that ends up with the main character.
The problem with the movie is not who ended up being the true heroine. A lot of people are understandably frustrated that she won but really that's just character bias and not an inherent fault of the series as a whole. I'm not going deeper into this argument, I just wanted to mention it for clarity.
The problem with the movie is the problem that the series caused itself the moment it started. It's biggest strength is also it's biggest weakness: There are too many girls. As much as the concept of a harem of red-haired quintuplets is very unique, it ends up being a dissatisfaction for literally everyone involved because there is no way you can develop a relationship between the main character and all the girls equally, let alone develop just the girls themselves as characters. Yeah, sure you can go the harem route but those endings are rarely well received. People would rather see the development of one romantic relationship with just one of the girls if it's done well - even if that girl might not be the one they like the most.
A lot of harem series actually manage to break free from their shackles and start developing the relationship between the main character and the true heroine more at some point in the story. Quintessential Quintuplets unfortunately has never managed to do that. It keeps teasing into all directions until the very end and then throws in a spontaneous conclusion of who the true heroine is. The relationship development is basically just skimmed over and then we are also skipping straight to marriage. But I guess it's some sort of novelty. You don't often see marriage proposals in romcoms, let alone before characters are even dating properly. Take the last statement with a grain of sarcasm.
The pacing of this movie is INSANE by the way. I haven't seen a lot of movies with so many tonal shifts in 2 hours. While some scenes were moderately paced, others were incredibly fast to the point that they felt completely disconnected from the overall arching plot. Uesugi's grade school friend visiting is the most prominent example. She came, was on screen for 2 minutes where nothing happened and left and was never seen again. What the hell.
The middle section of the movie felt a bit like the endless eight for me. We get to see the school festival from 5 different points of views but inevitably you end up seeing some scenes multiple times. Despite one or two nice kissing scenes, the middle section of the movie felt like a drag. Itsuki's point of view was particularly bad because someone apparently felt the need to include some drama with the quintuplet's biological father into the movie. This character has never appeared anywhere in the series before, nor was he even mentioned. Much like Uesugi's childhood friend, he came, accomplished nothing and vanished and was never seen again.
Animation felt subpar with a lot of still images but I guess quality-wise it's kinda similar to the second season. I'm used to movies going about this with a bit more budget and making them stand out more (think about Liz to Aoi Tori) but I guess they went for a similar art direction as in the previous season.
All in all I did not really like this movie. At times it feels like a collection of scenes in disarray and there is no little to no real development happening. It concludes the series, but it does so in a highly unsatisfying manner.
4 / 10
