Učiage hanabi, šita kara miru ka? Joko kara miru ka?

The first thing I have to mention is the soundtrack, which is a really well-put-together musical accompaniment. It managed to grab me; I was pretty enchanted by it and it made my experience more powerful than it would have been if the soundtrack had been less striking. The other thing that caught my attention was the narrative itself. I have certainly seen a few variations on the "what if..." subject matter, where the screenwriters play around with time and reality. However, in this movie, it was well put together and was charming in its own way (like the "If" sign inside the sphere...). The characters were likable, even though, somehow, I did not feel the chemistry as strong as I had thought I would. I also felt a bit sorry for Yusuke; he did something that no girl would ever forgive you for. Despite that, I somehow naively believed that part of his motivation was knowing how Norimichi felt about Nazuma. At least I wanted to think this because then I would have found his behavior much more logical, and I could say that he did not piss me off. The other thing is the animation; some of the images are beautiful, like some of the variations on fireworks and the landscape shots. However, at other times the CGI is very distracting and almost unattractive (like the bike ride). So what I took away from this movie was that there are always plenty of options, and if you really want something, you have to at least try to reach for it. I also hope that I understood everything that was going on correctly and that the ending is not as open as someone who was not paying attention might have thought. I enjoyed it 7/10. (2018.04.24)