On this eventful night, I found myself tuning in to this anime movie. I heard from friends that it would be sad, I heard that it would break me, and yet I stand dumbfounded in the face of this undying light. Whereupon I may find the courage to stand up against this show is naught, for it is nil and void within my heart. In the deepest recesses of my mind, I find it pillaged, wrought from all of its essentials, and left bare. Raw, unavoidable emotion scraped raw from the depths of my mind, left barren and sore for the show to take and suplex over its back, over, and over, and over again. Henceforth, the extermination of all basic thought process has begun.

This show has broken me.

There is frankly no other way to put it besides that. It physically pained me to watch this show, from the ugly-cry that I performed for the makers of the show to laugh at as they implement perfect story-telling along with beautiful visuals that capture and provide consistent allure throughout the entire show: like a siren calling to an unknowing sailor, I fell into its trap and felt myself fall away alongside it.

Never before have I been this obsessed, enraptured, and captured by a movie before. The way the story folds out, keeping you on the edge of your seat the entire time, wondering which character will break first, who is naturally evil and who is not, if redemption is capable within the characters minds, etc, the list may continually grow. When Shoya grasped unto Shouko's arm, and using his last bit of strength, he hauled her up and let himself go down instead, a pit in my stomach formed. Tears fell, however I did not cry as hard as I did when Shoukou's mother beat Ueno outside of the hospital. The entirety of that scene made me gasp and choke on my tears: literally.

Meanwhile you can hear Shouko's muffled voice, screaming that she's sorry, apologizing for a crime she never committed. Meanwhile her mom is trying to handle a million different things on her plate at once. This show is all at once a masterpiece, a tragedy and an uplifting tale, both black and white, contrasting simultaneously against each other in such an arc that it is unforgivingly melancholic, tragic, yet joyful and inherently spontaneous all at once. The only way that I can describe this show with one specific element is fire: capable of all at once reminding you of home, of your childhood, of everything great in the world, and on the other hand-- capable of bringing upon great pain unto one's life.

This juxtaposition is the best way to describe it. Like a game of tug of war, your heart is torn apart, being tugged in a multitude of directions until nothing remains but a cavity quickly filled with tears.

God is good, however, this show is greater.

WATCH THIS.