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Review of the plot and themes:__ Very good movie, not specifically for its romance. It makes you think about relationships and how to support someone you care for through different means and how even something silly as a little statue or a drawing or taking someone to a special place can help someone in a great way. It's got a nice message overall, the plot is very very simple and very obvious from the start, however it doesn't detract from the fact that it's a really good story that handles its themes very well, also the flow of love between the main characters feels very good and non-rushed, in other words, it makes the love seem very real. There's a very noticeable contrivance at the end of the movie but I let it slide since the main point of that scene is that she's avoiding him to let him go, this way she avoids "spoiling it" so he can leave and fulfill his dreams and she doesn't get hurt any more than she needs by being rejected or watching him leave. Overall this movie shows a big range of REAL emotions and how poorly some people handle some emotions, all of this in a movie with a very simple and obvious story. Its holy good.
The themes: The ones that appear in this movie are very common in relationships. The themes that I think this movie touches upon are: insecurities and not knowing how to show them, jealousy, love and how to show it, pursuing dreams and giving up on them, learning to become your own person and stand on your own.
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The animation:__ I'm not an animator or artist so I can only comment of how it looks at a very superficial level, so bear with me haha. Its god tier, the backgrounds are amazingly done and the rain puddles in the movie look almost like real life, practically indistinguishable.The movements, designs and expressions of characters is overall pretty good too.
The music: I can't really say many sounds stood up to me while watching this movie, the ending song sung by Eve is definitely an amazing piece of music but besides that one, nothing really made my ears perk up but that's just me, you might love the soundtrack. Maybe a re-watch could make me change my mind, dunno.
Characters: This is something I'm a little thorn by because, even if I still love many aspects of this movie, many of its characters feel... as if they don't matter that much or aren't well developed.
(I'm gonna talk about the characters that lack development so this part contains SPOILERS. I'll only mention the friends and the grandma)
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Mai Ninomiya:__ She's a very interesting characters that is not given the time to shine properly, her role in the movie gets established very early. After that we barely see her and only see her again to hear her feelings of jealousy but not really her motives for loving him, only close to the end we get to see how much she loves Tsuneo. So much in fact, that she's willing to go to Josee's home to motivate her in a way that may seem malicious but it's more defiant than anything, since she values Tsuneo so much, her way of speaking is actually like asking Josee to defy her and show her that she will help Tsuneo, because she knows that Tsuneo has feelings for Josee and she wants to see how far Josee will go for him. (I like this last scene for her because at least it treats her like she has depth). Sadly, her motives are never established and she gets no depth, so she ends up being a character that is used more as a tool than as a character itself.
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Chizu Yamamura: __This character gets even less time than Mia and less development. She's Josee's grandma, she keeps Josee tied to this house and closed off to the real world. We never learn her motives for keeping Mia in this cage but we know she doesn't hate it when she leaves with Tsuneo. We can only asume it's because its because her grandma thinks that the world will hurt her. Once the grandma dies she is used as tool to establish Josee's character more, since this crumbling down and doesn't know what to do with her life anymore. It's a shame that she's only used as a tool for the plot.
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Hayato Matsuura:__ Not much to say honestly, you can see he cares for his friends deeply and it's willing to go the extra mile for them but besides that, nothing else.
(I didn't talk about Kana Kishimoto beacuse she's just very uninteresting, only a tool.)
I'm just sharing this review cause I love watching movies and love trying to look deeper into them. Media is very interpretative so even if the themes I mentioned are touched upon in the movie, it doesn't mean this movie can't offer something else to you.
Thanks for reading my review, I might do more in the future or of some of the movies I've watched recently. __
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