At the beginning of the film, we discover two characters: Hanashiro Anzu - a girl - and Touno Kaoru - a boy. The choice of voices of the seiyu of the two characters, very calm, changes enormously from the very pronounced intonations that we generally find in anime. Overall, from beginning to end, these two characters will form a friendship and then fall in love. However, I blame the relational aspect of the characters for not having been explored enough.
I find the general atmosphere of the anime quite depressing, given Kaoru's past and motivations in particular. The girl, on the other hand, is more the incarnation of the future, with the desire to become a great mangaka, like her grandfather. However, what unites our two characters is the present, since both will learn to live there by developing feelings for each other.
I found the film quite slow, lacking scenes that wake us up a little.
On the girl's side, I admit that I was a little bored in the scene where they are both in the apartment, when she talks about her goal of becoming a mangaka. I found the scene long and redundant.
On the boy's side, I was very moved by his rather disrupted family life, since he has neither his mother nor his little sister by his side and the only close person he knows is his father, who has fallen into alcoholism and denies the events of the past.
We feel a deep loneliness and a certain depression towards the characters. However, the love story will fill this lack of "joy" that I blame the film for.
For the story of the death of the little sister, it made me think a little of the anime Ano Hana. We find in particular the theme of mourning and having to accept that the person is no longer among us, that we must let them go.
My feeling during the anime was that many elements were treated too quickly. I'm not saying that we jump from one thing to another, but just when focusing on certain elements more than others, we could have been better anchored in the film. I'm thinking in particular of the love story between the two characters, the relationships at school, and Kaoru's past. Conversely, I think that the many scenes where only messages on a phone are shown could have been reduced and replaced by real discussions.
Apart from the story which weighs a little on our morale at certain moments, the music is very beautiful and the visuals are magnificent. We see that the animation studio has done an incredible job.
5.5 out of 6 users liked this review
