First off, the animation. Its a Makoto Shinkai film, of course it has incredible animation, but the world depicted here is stunning. Everything, as always, looks gorgeous. This film however, for me anyway, had a certain charm that others, including Your Name, Zuzume and 5 Centimetres does and I find it very hard to explain it. I think the world here is so varied in its tones, colour and atmosphere you can't really ask for more. Also, i,m starting to see a theme in the depiction of cats in Makoto's films and that is Cats. There seems to be a significant character in most films i have seem that is a cat in his films. Still, the animation of these cats varies and this one in particular plays just as much of a key role as the one in Zuzume. Most people would probably disagree with this statement, but i feel they are equally important. Animation is 10/10.
Secondly is the music and my goodness is this perfect. I wont talk too much about the music as most of his films contain fantastic music that has very little negatives, this films is an exception, it has no negatives. I thought the music her was stunning.
Finally the story and the only part preventing this from being a perfect 10/10. For me this is so so close to a 10 i've been thinking about it for the last 3 days. Considering my lengthy contemplation, it cant possibly be a 10. Regardless of this, it is a fantastic story. Out of the Makoto films i have seen so far; 5 Centimetres, Your Name, Zuzume, Weathering With You and this, i feel this is the largest story told of them all. Yest despite this possibly having the largest amount of content to get through, it does so with impeccable pacing and wonderful character development. So much happens here and with every passing moment you never seem to be able to guess what happens next. The journey we do on is rather emotional one to that manages to build fantastically to an 'Oh my god NO!' moment and them kind of drops down from it to a somewhat satisfying conclusion but I felt it built the emotion up to high and climaxed a little to soon before the finish. One of the criticisms given to this is that Asuna is on this treacherous and at times life threatening journey for little reason. Seemingly these people forget that most of anime consists of characters do the most dramatic for little reason. I however think the reason is more than justified. We have a girl who is alone, who is 11, has lost her father, her mother is barely home due to her job as a nurse, who is forced to grow up way beyond her years who then meets someone that takes this pain away for a brief moment and then she is back to being alone again. Trust me, when viewed through this lens, anyone who has ever felt alone, will understand.
As I said in the preceding paragraph, this is so unrelievedly lose to a 10. For me, out of Makoto's films i have seen, this is the second only to Your Name and it comes so very close to equalling it for me.
