This is a fictional  story framed around the illness of wind surfer Iijima Natsuki about the importance of councelling for the ill.  The story was well told and showed the many stages of dealing with terminal illness.  The acting never felt flat or forced not even from the child actress.  The music was repeative, Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven played at LEAST 6 times in 2  hours.  The rewatch value is almost nil for me as I usually don't like this style of show, I only watched it for Ninomiya.

Why did I give it a 9 then?  Because the story was well told, nice, calm and inviting. I didn't tear up but the feelings were definitely conveyed.  Its kind of hard to use the word nice when speaking about a movie centered around terminal illness but that's what it was, nice.