The short answer is it's fine. Sincerely, this was a fine, charming, quaint little film. It has an odd little urban fantasy. It's a coming-of-age story about learning to be more independent, a small exploration of found families and working together, and a quirky twist on shinto-tinged fantasy lore.

Sounds nice right? However, there are a lot of problems here. The problems are more numerous than they probably should be, especially with a really competent team, and a fairly solid director who has performed well in the past. The talent is clearly there, so what happened?

I think it's best to compare this to something like a gymnast performance. Sometimes a gymnast just has a bad day. Sometimes they have a great routine but either their mood, skill, or level of confidence just doesn't let them perform at the level they need to. It's just an oopsie. But enough small mistakes begin to add up real fast. It makes the whole performance just sloppy. You want to not blame them, because you see how skilled they are. But a subpar performance is still subpar.

So what happened here?

Let's start with the good. The presentation of this anime is GREAT. It's so pretty throughout. The character designs are fun, especially the clothing. Every time a character was was given a new piece of clothing, I got excited. The general design is a also nice. You can tell they spent a lot of time getting their designs just right, especially the color palettes. The backgrounds and landscape shots are also quite lavish. There are quite a few CGI shots throughout the film, but they're fairly inoffensive. Also, can we talk about the monster designs? Holy crap those are cool. The whale mouth those things have is legitimately one of the neatest, creepiest looking things ever. I love it!

That's nice, but there's bad right? Unfortunately, there's quite a lot of bad. The biggest problem with this film is that it's story and pacing are all over the place.

This film feels like it was written out of order and without cohesion. This comes in two parts: the order of the plot and the structure of the narrative.

First the plot. This is the general story of teens go on an adventure, resolve a conflict, and hopefully come out the other side happy. The problem is that it's extremely bookended. The first quarter is really intriguing and fun; the last quarter is very intriguing and fun. Then... there's all of the rest. The middle half of the film is just kind of there. It's made as this travel journey, but the travel is not very purposeful. All the action happens in meeting this girl, learning about her lore, and then concluding the big story at the end. But the center of the story is this odd slice-of-life. Don't get me wrong, the slice-of-life is nice and cozy. But it feels out of place in a more story-driven, action-oriented film.

Then there's the narrative. Here the problems deepen. What is this story about? Well, it's about an oni girl who comes to the real world. Why? Well, for reasons. Also, did you know that people leak energy when they are hiding their emotions? Don't worry, that won't be important later, only for the times where it's relevant. Our main character has a bit of a complicated house-life with a strict dad. But don't worry, the dad will go away when he's not important. Oh, by the way, the oni girl wants to find her mom, who is gone, but she didn't come here, so she'll have to go somewhere else to find her. Oh, and the fun part, we get to travel to oni world. Why is it in snow land? Dunno, but there are monsters, and they're sorta spawned from the oni girls mom, but sort of not. Also, the demons have their own society, but it's not important. What is important, is that the main characters reconnect with their family, but that happens after the films over, so don't worry.

Do you see the problem? Not only is there a LOT of plot to cover, but there are about ten-thousand different concepts and ideas they want to explore. This film isn't even 2 hours, and it's trying to handle all of that and more. Because of this, the screenplay is never allowed to linger on a coherent point. It's like a pinball, constantly bouncing between story beats. This leaves it difficult to keep up, and the story quickly loses coherency. Even when you can understand the general path the anime wishes to explore, it still leaves you confused, just because of the sheer volume of concepts and ideas.

This film also seems to be suffering from identity crisis. What does this film want to be? Is it a coming-of-age film? Is it a found family film? Is it a roadtrip film? Is it a tourism advertisement for Yamagata Prefecture? It's it a romance? Is it a family drama? Is it a fantasy? I wish I could tell you, because it's literally all of those at the same time. This film is so bloated on ideas that it's dizzying. What's worse, because the film is so spread thin in plot, narrative, and direction, it feels so milquetoast and bland. It never commits to anything, so anything meaningful the film has to say, it has no ground to stand on while saying it.

It's really just unfortunate, because so much about this had such high potential. This COULD have been great if they focused in on one aspect of the story. If this was just about the oni girl, awesome. If this was just about the protagonist, cool. If this was just about the slice-of-life, cool. If this was just about defeating the evil monsters, cool. Instead, it's all of those concepts and MANY MANY MORE. But then it's just nitpicking on what could have been, rather than what was made. And what was made was not very good. It is entertaining. It's cute. But if you're looking for something meaningful and deep, you're in the wrong place.