Just a small disclaimer beforehand: My native language is not English so please excuse any mistakes made... I am also not a film critic, I know nothing about film- I just like pretty movies lol.

So this popped up on my Netflix recommendations today and as the trailer looked pretty promising, I thought I'd give it a shot.
Just from looking at the trailer itself, the cinematography and overall feeling that was conveyed it looked like the movie was right up my alley. To say that I was completely wrong going into it would be an exaggeration, I don't think it's a horrible movie. Just a bit disappointing.
Maybe I should also mention, that I have not read the manga it's based on nor have I looked into it, plot wise.

In my opinion, the story in itself was not bad. At all. It's going with the kind of romantic, young adult, coming of age plotline, that I think is very popular especially with younger girls and women (that's me! I'm a sucker for these movies lol). It also doesn't shy away from more mature topics like sex, teen pregnancies, family troubles and sexual abuse, which for me is very refreshing to see in a movie of this genre.
Sadly the way the story progresses is very ill-paced and thus takes away from that. It's rushed and glazes over important plotpoints and scenes that should require more in depth discourse about shown themes, which leaves you feeling a bit weirded out at best and outright confused at worst.
The pace also made it a bit difficult for me to actually grasp the main idea or moral of the story. I think the director wanted it to be a story about self discovery, about growing up and learning to love yourself first but because of these at times somewhat poorly thrown together scenes with in my opinion lacking and mismatched dialogues, it became this kind of frankenstein-esque love triangle thing.

The script... was written with good intentions. Some dialogues had so much potential (ex. a scene where Ryoki compares Hatsumi to the universe, tells he he feels the universe when he's with her; another where Azusa talks about that one thinks one is loved forever and the next moment one is tossed aside) but where crushed by the following nonsensical, rushed one.
While watching I constantly felt like I was getting what the director wanted to convey but that it got horribly lost in the horrendous pacing which turned it from a film with so much potential, with important messages and lessons to learn to something rushed and thus at times crass and vulgar looking.
Now, concidering the fact that it is the movie adaptation of a manga, it's very clear where this rush comes from. So I think watching with the thought of "Oh this is multiple books compressed into a two hour movie" in the back of your head will actually help you make sense of this stumbled mess of a storyline.

I felt like visually, the actors were well casted to portray their characters (even though I think they probably could've changed Azusas bright orange hair to just plain blonde in favour of the overall mood and tone of the movie).
I can't say much about the actors abilities, as I haven't watched any of their other works but I'd say that it was quite well done acting. Again, most problems I'd have with the acting could be traced back to the pace of how the movie progressed. The characters themselves don't have very much depth, as, again, the pace doesn't really leave much room for development and there were a lot of scenes which opened uo the possibiltiy of further elaborating on the characters past or current struggles and emotions but were left unfinished to die out...
I have to say though, probably my favourite dynamic in this movie is between Hatsumi and her little sister. It's a very pure sisterly love, that doesn't get much screentime but is very well portrayed.

The music.... was not good. For me, most of the time I thought it rather ill-fitting and did absolutely nothing the support the emotions of the scenes. Something more on the subtle side, maybe instrumental or sometimes just plain silence would've fit a bit better with the imagery and cinematography.

Which brings me to my absolute favourite part of the film: The cinematography.
If I were to just watch the whole movie on silent, I'd loved it. The colours, the scenery, the way it was filmed and edited (the pictures edited perfectly fitting into the flow of the scene!!!!!!) was exactly what kind of film I like. The surrounding city was very well used, fit into the mood of the movie and was able to support the storyline perfectly. It's a very very pretty movie. Now, I can see that the style this was filmed in is not everyone's cup of tea as it seems quite erratic in some scenes, but I really like this more alternative style a lot.

So in conclusion, it's not a completely bad movie, just a whole truckload of wasted opportunities. They really would've done better just making this into a TV show.
I wouldn't really recommend this to people looking for a nice storyline or a simple love story, BUT if you're like me and like watching pretty movies with nice cinematography I would still give it a go. It's best though, to go in with no expectations regarding the plot or character development lol.

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