I'll not go around pretending like this is a masterpiece. But if an anime makes me cry, that means it does something right.

A notable thing about this anime, is that it doesn't really have clear parallels with the real world. Almost entirety of it makes up a simple story with interesting parkour-style concept, and otherworldly bubbles. Why parkour? Because kids decided to parkour in abandoned ruins. But really, just because it's cool and beautiful. Why bubbles? It wont tell. But probably, just because they're cool and beautiful. ~~Why there's an Eiffel Tower in Tokyo?~~ Ok, ok, it turns out that's a Tokyo Tower. This is what you get to know when anime takes place somewhere else then yet another school. But anyways, the simple story just goes on, and keeps you watching. It isn't clever, ground-breaking, or even thoughtful — just cute and interesting, at least enough to watch it without a back thought.

But lets not pretend like we're here for bubbles — the cute girl, Uta, is just as cute as you'd expect. Even more so, given the beautiful voice sheningans they pulled off. Truly a great beauty. The guy, Hibiki, is also kinda cute, not gonna lie.

It's only the last minutes of it, that you go through the emotional roller coaster. Plain and simple anime characters, typical to the bones, are grouping together and showing compassion to a single person. Yes, even those assholes who are the cool antipodes. The sacrifice of Uta, which is a big loss for everyone around, stops the world from destruction, just to emotionally hit you with the realization that the destruction is yet to happen IRL. Allegedly, that is. Even though I cannot attest to the idea of the death of the universe, the idea of all of us dying plain and simple, fully predicted, death — is something that hits too close to home. Unless you're still young and happy :-)

And if the last paragraph feels messy, that's because the ending didn't make much sense. But what it did, is it charged me with emotions that I had to discharge through tears. Does that mean the plot is bad? In isolation — yes. In entirety — it served its purpose.

The same line of thought can be applied to almost anything with this anime, especially characters. Others criticize it for the mess and plainness, but I believe it is just right. You cannot expect three-layered characters where each also has a backstory and character development, as well as a full though-out world, from every anime. And especially a one-off movie.

A simple story allows for a powerful message. A complex story dilutes it.

Drawings and animation are beautiful. From the first look at the cover art I classified this anime to the "one of those beautiful anime movies that make you cry" genre that I made up, and I was absolutely right. To be honest, I did notice some issues — sometimes the running feels unnatural relatively to the moving environment. And some Uta's face close-ups where a bit uncanny, reminding me of the anime-specific headlights-eyes kind of face.

Some say that apparently there was also some CGI, and if so — it is absolutely great, because I didn't even notice.

The voice sheningans, that made Uta's voice so quite even when emotionally charged, is both beautiful and unnatural. And so is her singing. And so is the tower's song.

I don't really know much about parkour, but at least some moves seemed real, while also looking cool. And this is yet another point for the animation. The certainly unreal part was that all of the moves were executed as improvisation in dynamic environments with rocks and bubbles flying under the feet, yet sometimes they looked like characters were trained for exactly those moves in exactly that environment — but we are watching anime, not a parkour tournament.

All in all, that's a lovely anime that made me finally cry out some worries.