This review may contain spoilers
Strictly speaking from someone who has not read the manga, the movie is generally cute. The teacher/ student love position will likely be a source of contention for people before you even get like 20% into the story. If you can get over that, this is a pretty decent movie.
I will say you can tell that it feels like exposition is missing due to the speed of character interactions. Like Suzume and Yuyuka becoming friends so fast. Or Mamura liking Suzume feeling like the build up was missing. Especially during the Christmas scene, it didn't feel like it make any sense why he liked her. There was no build up to show that next to a few lingering looks. You hooks argue it was just implied but it wasn't strong enough in my opinion. I'm assuming there's scenes in the source material that shows that. So being one of the main relationships, it felt underwhelming. The relationship between Suzume and the Sensei also felt the same. Not enough definition of why. So this being the main story kinda broke the immersion.
Yukichi's confrontation with Satsuki also didn't feel strong because he spoke as if we had pretense to his and Suzume's relationship. We saw nothing of Yukichi's interactions with Suzume's to indicate if this was true. He totally felt like a throwaway character especially because they never really revealed what him and Satsuki talked about near the end.
Mei for me was definitely the right person to choose for this main role however. She's the perfect person to play a naive but emotional character. She has this perpetual look of confusion. Definitely felt like a manga heroine. She was ahead of everyone in terms of acting capability in this movie. She felt the most believable. There were tons of scenes with awkward interactions but for the most part Mei kept it grounded.
Now let's talk about the cinematography. It's very well done. The one thing about Japanese movies is when they do lighting well it has a totally different feel to western movies. The sense of a special moment or place in time getting captured in isolation was featured really well in this movie. The Christmas tree scene or the night time conversation between Mamura and Suzume come to mind.
I suppose this may also come from the manga panels framing key sequences to emphasize their importance and translating it over to live action. But there are some really pretty shots in this movie. It helps the movie's overall appeal since some of the relationships don't truly have good reasoning.
The music is very cute as well. I can't really remember much of the music but I can tell you it made me cheerful. The race theme was very dramatic though! And the ending theme is very bubbly.
I think if you are just looking for a nice movie to throw on, this would be a good candidate.
I will say you can tell that it feels like exposition is missing due to the speed of character interactions. Like Suzume and Yuyuka becoming friends so fast. Or Mamura liking Suzume feeling like the build up was missing. Especially during the Christmas scene, it didn't feel like it make any sense why he liked her. There was no build up to show that next to a few lingering looks. You hooks argue it was just implied but it wasn't strong enough in my opinion. I'm assuming there's scenes in the source material that shows that. So being one of the main relationships, it felt underwhelming. The relationship between Suzume and the Sensei also felt the same. Not enough definition of why. So this being the main story kinda broke the immersion.
Yukichi's confrontation with Satsuki also didn't feel strong because he spoke as if we had pretense to his and Suzume's relationship. We saw nothing of Yukichi's interactions with Suzume's to indicate if this was true. He totally felt like a throwaway character especially because they never really revealed what him and Satsuki talked about near the end.
Mei for me was definitely the right person to choose for this main role however. She's the perfect person to play a naive but emotional character. She has this perpetual look of confusion. Definitely felt like a manga heroine. She was ahead of everyone in terms of acting capability in this movie. She felt the most believable. There were tons of scenes with awkward interactions but for the most part Mei kept it grounded.
Now let's talk about the cinematography. It's very well done. The one thing about Japanese movies is when they do lighting well it has a totally different feel to western movies. The sense of a special moment or place in time getting captured in isolation was featured really well in this movie. The Christmas tree scene or the night time conversation between Mamura and Suzume come to mind.
I suppose this may also come from the manga panels framing key sequences to emphasize their importance and translating it over to live action. But there are some really pretty shots in this movie. It helps the movie's overall appeal since some of the relationships don't truly have good reasoning.
The music is very cute as well. I can't really remember much of the music but I can tell you it made me cheerful. The race theme was very dramatic though! And the ending theme is very bubbly.
I think if you are just looking for a nice movie to throw on, this would be a good candidate.
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