__A review of _Fragtime___

spoilers~

The feature film (ova?) Fragtime, adapted from Sato's yuri manga, is memorable for its ambitious thematic thrust, yet falls short of truly achieving a perfect execution—it's notably liberal in its use of narrative shortcuts, resulting in a stunted & dry story. Its strength is in it's premise and ideas, and occasionally in strong moments, but the rest of its runtime is padded with somewhat boring craft, and exposition. And, its plenty heavy on exposition—many of the key moments are essentially explained through voiceover.

The "thematic thrust" I described earlier is quite possibly, the most powerful facet of the Fragtime experience, so I'll cover that first. Fragtime is a romance; the tensions & struggles are created through the interplay between our two mains. These two mains are: Misuzu Moritani, our protagonist, a girl mostly characterized for her loneliness, her seclusion from the rest of high school society—she practically lives in her own world (haha); Our deuteragonist, Haruka Murakami, the love interest, is a girl notable for how social and altruistic she is—she tries to be friends with, and tries to please everyone around her, to a self-destructive extent—using a false performative façade, and ignoring her “true self”. The growth and progression of the characters are as follows: Moritani has to become more social, break her self-contained bubble, and become attuned to the needs of others; while Murakami’s growth is opposite of this—she has to stop being so destructively altruistic, and become a bit selfish with her own personal needs. These internal struggles are symbolized through the time-stop—Moritani uses the time-stop as an escape from difficult situations, and escape from having to deal with others, it’s symbolic of her seclusion; to Murakami, its an escape from having to maintain her façade, she can just be herself. This escapism can’t last forever though, so they have to come to terms with their issues—the conclusion being that the time-stop ability has disappeared, and both girls learn to grow.

Fragtime’s theming is quite excellent in two ways. The first being that the film is quite articulate in this theming; it understands it and expresses it with a sophistication that is quite compelling, and well above average. The second, is Murakami; her self-destructive behavior and façade, while slightly trope-y, hit hard with me—while I don’t think I act in this way, I have friends that do, to a great detriment to their mental health. It’s quite a unique perspective, and it works somewhat well.

I also have issues with the storytelling though. Mostly, it’s just like, “lazy”, y’know. Quite possibly the most prominent criticism for Fragtime is its sub-par characters, and I’m inclined to agree—the characters are mostly flat and underdeveloped. These characters are very non-distinct, and most aspects of their character are derived from common tropes—outside of the simple of character outlines, there aren't many interesting, unique, or even endearing character traits. I praised the theming for being articulate, but its not flawless; it’s very blunt and lacks nuance or subtlety. I’ve been lenient on it, but some might find it too generic, as many aspects of the theme are done better in other places—an example would be Yagate Kimi ni Naru’s Touko—though one could argue Touko's arc is about a different form of performativity, but I digress. The script is also not particularly tight in general—it covers the ground it needs to, but it overuses devices such as exposition, and it’s not particularly engaging. The storytelling itself is feels clunky & unwieldy, and due to the “looseness” of the script, it doesn’t flow well.

I feel a similar way about the script and the artwork; its memorable, but not exceptional. Fragtime’s character designs are of a style that I quite like, very low contrast and no shadows, but sharp linework—yet Fragtime doesn’t do this particularly well, the designs are sharp, expressive, and attractive, but not really dynamic, or animated; in like the way that, for example, Sadamoto Yoshiyuki’s designs in Mamoru Hosoda films are. The backgrounds are fine; they’re forgettable. The overall presentation is, similarly, just fine. The film doesn’t really show a particular talent for the edit, composition, or anything, really.

sharp, low contrast, pretty designs background art

Fragtime has some good qualities, yet it isn’t a flawless experience. I enjoyed my time with this film, yet there were plenty of moments where it broke my suspension of disbelief. I liked it; very gay movie.