I give this a carefully calculated **5.49**/10. Yes, it's not 5.5 so I can "round down" to 5 instead of going up to a 6.

While I can agree with @saint-pauly to a certain extent that the film feels more like an anime than a movie (whatever that means, given that anime movies exist)… the writing just isn't there. If all I know about a character is their name, job, and who they love, they're not a character at all. If I don't know _why_ the character is doing something, or _what_ they want, I might as well just watch ants or something. (Actually, that's not fair to ants…) Movie or anime, I'll hold the screenplay to the same standards, and this one didn't meet them.

This film is _amazing_ as an atmospheric piece. It's so beautiful! And you should definitely read @omegancq's review regarding the original Japanese title and how it relates to the cinematography. Japanese filmmakers really seem to have the art of making pretty pictures (both films & frames) down. Rarely have I ever watched a film from Japan (made in the last 20 years or so) that didn't blow me away with at least a few stunning shots. I just wish that the writing was so consistently great.

As I made my way through this film, I grew increasingly frustrated with the flatness of the characters. Nearly all the dialogue revolves around the film's main romance (love polygon?) and we learn _so little_ about these people despite several time skips. Even worse, I honestly think the female characters' dialogue would fail the Bechdel Test. Realizing that the girls in this movie pretty much only ever talk about their boyfriends with each other just made me even more frustrated.

It's a cute, gorgeous piece of cinema, and I want to praise it! But I just can't rate this without also considering the awful characterizations. They're just _so empty_ that it hurts.