Never thought I'd leave a review for an anime before, but there's a first time for everything it seems. Unfortunately, my first review isn't about something I enjoyed, but about a heaping pile of trash that somehow crawled it's way to the top of the rankings. It's baffling to me how people can think this is good. My only hope is that it is a botnet hired by the studio to boost their rankings so people will buy more of their terrible products. If you find yourself falling for cheap "emotional" tricks without any attempt by the author/director to make a real emotional connection, then this anime is for you. Potential spoilers ahead.

The key to making a good, sad, and emotional movie is establishing a strong emotional connection between the characters and the audience. The best way to do this is generally by building empathy between the characters and the audience by showing the characters and the audience that they have a lot in common. For instance, you could have the character hanging out with their friends at the park or showing them getting frustrated at some game they're playing. Comedy also builds this connection. People generally tend to like being around people who make them laugh and smile, and this, in turn, makes them like those people who they laughed with. When the sad moment happens, the audience will feel a stronger emotional charge when something bad happens to these characters that they were previously having such a good time with. The maker of this anime decided to throw all that out the window. Instead, they chose to start the movie by playing depressing music while the MC tries to kill himself. Now, something like this could have worked out if they had bounced back to happier times with the MC playing with his friends or whatever. No, they decide to keep this dark tone for THE WHOLE DAMN MOVIE.

I'm going to describe the character's background, and you tell me where you can find the emotional connection. MC lives in the attic of his single mom's hairdressing business, where he, his mom, and his black niece live together. MC is a rambunctious kid who bullies this deaf girl at school. Deaf girl tries to make friends with classmates, but they just made fun of her and left her behind. MC gets pinned for all the blame of the bullying despite the other classmates also contributing and is left a loner as his friends leave him in the dust. The deaf girl then transfers to another school because of the bullying. MC's mom empties her bank account to pay back the deaf girl's mom for all the hearing aids that the MC broke to try and make up for her kid's mess. MC is left with a chip on his shoulder as he goes through middle and high school.

This is not the set up for the highest-rated movie on most anime sites; this is the set up for some B-rated show your mom would watch while saying "poor thang" as she did something more entertaining on her phone. Let me reiterate, giving your main character a trash background doesn't make it an "emotional" movie. It just means the writers were too stupid to come up with an idea for an empathetical connection and decided to check off some "bad upbringing" and "suicidal" boxes instead, hoping to trick some idiots into thinking this is what it a "good" movie is. Even the dang ancient Greeks knew better than this, at least they generally started their characters off as living the high life before bringing them to their knees and having them go through a redemption arc. This story completely neglects the first part of this basic formula without doing anything to replace it.

If you're looking for an excellent movie with a lasting emotional impact that will have you sleeping on the story for weeks, then this anime is not for you. If you're looking for something whose story could have been thought up by some random middle schooler from Frenzo, California, who's class was going over sad literature and the teacher asked them to write a sad story in one hour, then boy do I have the anime for you!

I may never get those 2 and a half hours back, but at least the animation itself was decent looking.

3/10 Don't watch.