The Calm Before the Storm
I'm sure I'll get a lot of shit from this review. Just to prepare the people who love this film who also bother to read the review for some reason, I didn't really like it, it has many things in it that are fairly bad and for that my rating is low. Also, spoilers ahead.
Edit: I took out the theming/messaging part because I wasn't really saying anything and what I did say was kinda dumb tbh.
My Main Gripes with Josee
I find Josee to be a horrible person even though she's clearly supposed to be likeable, over the course of the film she treated Tsuneo horribly and expects his service in return just because she's in love with him and doesn't want to be vulnerable. At the very end with the story book was a good moment showcasing her appreciation of him throughout the course of his employment under them but it doesn't erase how she treated him. Plus, she was the sole purpose of him getting in an accident that could have fucked up his whole life, he did not deserve that, he shouldn't have suffered that consequence even if eventually he got better.
My Main Gripes with Mai
I find Mai who loves him to be disgusting as well, her jealousy reaches the point where he tries to demoralize Josee even after her Grandmother dies, she's just piling on sadness in her so that she can feel defeated. She also chose to say that she loves Tsuneo in his most vulnerable moments where he's very upset after getting injured, she clearly does this as a play to get him to love her back. She also even says how she wants him to stay the way she is so that she could always take care of him and be by his side and never leave which is disgusting, she should support him leaving and get him motivated to do so just like Josee did.
Pacing/Structure
The 3rd act of this movie is pretty messy. The first 2 acts were fine in establishing everyone’s characters, their relationships with one another, establishing their goals and ideals, showcasing the blooming relationship between Tsuneo and Josee and establishing the idea of leaving someone behind to pursue your dreams through Tsuneo and Josee’s relationship. In the 3rd act, after Josee’s grandma dies, we just get sudden conflicts. First is Mai, she’s just awful and speaks down to Josee to discourage her so that she can let him go. This comes right after her grandma’s death which was also very sudden and wasn’t really built up at all. Two things in a row that came out of nowhere to affect the rest of the movie. Now in Josee’s depressed state after all this has happened, when Tsuneo tries to go to her and comfort her, she pushes him away which is fine, that’s not the problem, the problem is that it affects Tsuneo. He gets in a car accident, and is punished. While this does give him a unique and better understanding of Josee’s feelings of frustration and depression, it also serves to put him down just so that Josee can be the one to build him back up later even though it was her fault he got like that in the first place since she ran away after he tried to speak with her. Then after he gets healed and everything, they added yet another conflict of Josee not showing up to pick him up after he had asked her to. In all honesty, I don’t really understand her reasons for not showing up, I didn’t understand what she was talking about with him doing it for her and not for him, but I’m sure that answer won’t satisfy me regardless. Then they meet up and the movie basically ends. Then in the after credits they show him coming back from the trip to visit and we get a scene between him and Josee that doesn’t really say or do anything.
Final Thoughts
This was a very frustrating movie for me and one I had a lot of trouble rating. Obviously the animation and art style in this film is beautiful and those underwater scenes especially are marvelous. But animation and art are just coating, once you actually bite into it, it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I found character in this movie to be lacking in general, Tsuneo and his guy friend who's name I forgot were both fairly cookie cutter characters to me but Mai and Josee were significantly worse by just being horrible people when I really don't think that was the intention. I liked Josee making the librarian friend and getting to connect with someone and I like what it leads to near the end of the movie in a beautiful scene where she tells the story. This was hard to rate since I felt like I wasn't being too harsh on it with my low rating, yet I got taken in by some scenes as well as the art and animation but I've reached my final verdict that it's still bad. It isn't horrible. I'll be honest and say my anger with this movie and the reason it's rated so low are more so for personal reasons than it is the actual product of the film being bad though there is some of that as well. I don't like overly cutesy stories, I don't like them redeeming Josee in the way they did, I don't like that the story necessitated that Josee was the one to put Tsuneo back on his feet so that he'd definitely choose her, I don't like Mai as a character, I don't like how they portrayed jealousy with how awful it made both Josee and Mai and I just wasn't really a fan of the characters in general. I came out of this movie with mixed feelings that eventually solidified in anger and frustration and my rating is a reflection of that.
Signature Ending
Hope you can enjoy this movie more than I did, form your own opinion and maybe even justify some of the things I dislike.Thanks for reading!
