Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald

The animation, artwork, editing, music, bright colors, and constantly shifting perspectives are enough for me to recommend this film. Over and above that it’s a heartfelt and fun view of a sensitively evolving relationship between two adolescents where each is dealing with his or her own demons.

The boy is incredibly shy but expresses himself by obsessively composing brief haiku that reflect seasonally thematic observations. The girl is bubbly and outgoing and is constantly live streaming to an enthusiastic audience whatever at the moment she thinks is “cute” — but she hides her face behind a mask because she is ashamed of her braces and protruding front teeth.

They “meet cute” at a suburban shopping mall in the midst of a maelstrom of funny and boisterous action caused by one of the boy’s friend’s heist of a cardboard advertising figure. Another word that might be used to describe that wild shopping mall chase is “bonkers.”

After that, things start to settle down. We follow the two main characters and learn about their home lives and the personal issues each of them is wrestling with. Then, cleverly, the two are thrown together at a senior citizens’ center in that same shopping center. They become enmeshed in a search for, of all things, an old phonograph record to go in an album cover carried around by one of the absent-minded senior citizens.

Along with universally recognizable elements (cellphones, shopping mall, live streaming, hunger for social media “likes”) there’s much here that is very Japanese. But so much was easily recognizable even to this Westerner that it’s probably impossible not to be drawn in and ultimately very touched emotionally.

Highly recommended, both for the story and for the gorgeous eye-popping animation.

Review copyright (c) 2021 by Dennis D. McDonald

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