I'll start by making a little sum about the movie.
Hotaru is a 6 years old child who gets lost in a forest near her grandfather's house. She starts to cry, calling out Gin's attention. Hotaru wanted to touch him but there's a problem, Gin is a youkai and if a human touches him, he'll dissapear. Despite this, he guides Hotaru out of the forest. Since then, Hotaru visits Gin every summer.
We can say this movie's center are mythology and acceptance, this things are important because will forge and determinate the relationship our protagonists have.
This movie constantly reminds us our story happens in a forest full of youkai, mythological spirits from japanese culture. Youkai usually have a bad relationship with humans and live far away from them to avoid conflicts. Gin once was a human but his parents left him in the forest when he was a baby, youkais found him and decided to raise him as one of them. The spirits choose to make him be a part of their family, they accepted him despite their differences. However, Gin don't want to forget his human part, his biggest dream is being touched by a human.
Our protagonists meets when Hotaru was 6 years old and get lost in the forest, that day her relationship with Gin began. Naturally they started being friends, everyday Hotaru went to the forest to see Gin and play with him. Hotaru's childhood is one of the two points we can see more development (the other being Hotaru's middle adolescence) and when we know she only can visit Gin in summer because she don't live there. Then we see a little bit of the next summers until we the last year she visited him. Gin asked Hotaru to go together to youkais' festival that night and she accepted. They spent all the night having fun while we see a stereotypical japanese festival. This is the moment when their friendship becomes a relationship.
However I have a problem with this development. Yes, it's fine they started as friends and later became a couple, but we don't see very much development on screen since we have a lot of ellipsis between Hotaru's first and last summer. It's normal to use this element because this is a short film and we don't have a lot of time, but to me this is risky and misused. We can't connect very much with them or their relationship if we only see the beginning and ending of it. If this movie was a little bit longer, definitely this relationship would have a better development and not have a mutual loving interest suddenly.
Now I'd like to talk a little about backgrounds. Usually backgrounds have a lot of detail, even more with ancient buildings and statues. Something I saw is forest backgrounds have more detail than city backgrounds, this makes sense because the forest is where almost all the movie takes place and where our protagonists' relationship grows. Regardless of this, sometimes the corners were cut, but this is just a little detail.
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