Goodbye

The new film from the director of Sora yori mo Tooi Basho (Atsuko Ishizuka) has a similar modus operandi but it’s not as entertaining or engaging as the series. Sure, it has an awesome and powerful ending where everything falls perfectly into place, and the little hints that Ishizuka has hidden in the story start making sense. There's also a certain element of surprise as I didn’t really expect that. The way the main theme of the film gets accentuated is delightful because most of the time it just feels like a simple adventure of three friends. However, you have to turn a blind eye to certain things in the ending that only make sense from a somewhat idealistic perspective. The biggest problem for me is the fact that only the last quarter or so of the film was truly interesting and intense. The rest was just an ordinary, unexciting narrative, sometimes filled with supposedly deep dialogue, but not enough to enhance the action happening on screen. Everything only really starts to work at the very end. As I said, the finale may well surprise you and it might even improve the overall mediocre impression, as it did for me. In terms of animation, it’s decent, the music is distinctive, and the ending makes it great. 7/10 (29/11/2022)