Personally, I found the Seishun Buta Yarou anime quite decent. With it’s unique premise and overall depressive theme of the show, it was just boring for me. This is a completely biased opinion, but if I were to return to watch it again, probably it would be rated higher, but I didn’t enjoy dialogue-heavy anime that time.
So, after finishing the AoButa series, I did not know there was a movie, and I didn’t decide to watch it until a few months later. First of all, I must warn you, that you will be very depressed once you finish the show, and even more when you finish this movie.

You wouldn’t be reading this if you haven’t watched the series, so anyway, remember that one girl that was at the beach with Sakuta? Well, since it’s her character arc, it’s… well, about her.

To avoid spoilers, basically Sakuta goes through depression and does some physics-defying thing with time travel. To be honest, this movie did have some plot holes here and there, but otherwise it did a good job, especially with including quantum mechanics with all the time travelling biz.

Unlike most movies, the pacing in the movie is just the same as the anime itself. Normal movies usually push in a bunch of plot into 2 hours and make it feel super fast, whereas this movie feels refreshing. You can feel that it takes its time to steadily develop scenes, that really have their buildup.

The characters in the overall series are fun, too. Though I have to criticize Sakuta’s growing relationships with girls. While I don’t exactly call this a harem, his friends really are just girls. Oh well, they do contribute to Sakuta’s character development at least. Sakuta himself is a loner cliché main character, but he does certain things that are not cliché, especially the willingness to help others.

Perhaps the saddest theme in this movie are their own flaws. It hurts so much to consider between a bright future and a human life. It’s even sadder when the actual situation is put to test. Perhaps worse when the main character aims for the best future but ends up getting the worse one. But what I personally like about this movie is that they are willing to kill off characters and don’t rely on happy endings.

The art is also as good as always, whilst maintaining fair consistency. The animation is also uniquely fluid, which is a bonus. The character designs are average, as what is expected of a school-based anime. Though, for a movie, the animation wasn’t better than the series. It stayed the same.

The soundtrack wasn’t exactly noticeable for me, so I can’t exactly comment on this, but the voice acting… Wow. The voice acting, was spot-on, and they did their best to bring out the emotions. A fine job done by fine voice actors.

Personally, this movie blew my mind. It was just full of depression, and I also managed to understand the characters differently, and I also gained a new waifu, Mai-san. I found her slightly overrated in the series, but not anymore. This arc was by far, the best, and it was well constructed at that.
It had dealt with loss, just like the arc before, when Sakuta lost his younger sister’s personality, though this took a worse turn. Especially when Sakuta was alive to witness worser events. I had my expectations low, but it really blew my mind.
Of course, I wouldn’t exactly call it a masterpiece, as there were some minor flaws here and there, but it was close to being one.