I'm rounding my rating up from a 6.5 to a 7 because Trakt doesn't allow point-ratings. (The real rating is present in my list on MyDramaList, so at least I have that.)

For anyone who's seen my rating of the anime (https://trakt.tv/comments/99946), which I gave a 9, this low-ish (by comparison) rating is probably a big surprise. It's a big surprise to me, too. Let me try to explain the discrepancy.

The main reason is pacing, I'll put that right out there. This movie felt like it could have set its atmosphere and told its story in 90 minutes, but it took 139 (including credits). Compare that with the anime, which ran roughly 316 minutes (inclusive of every episode's credits/theme songs)—over twice the runtime, but it never felt dull. During this movie, I caught myself checking the clock at least five times, which is not a good sign. Sure, I might cut the film a little slack on that because, having seen the anime, I knew what was going to happen. But given that I've rewatched numerous TV series without succumbing to clock-checking—multiple times, even—that's still a pretty major strike against this movie's pacing.

Based on what I remember from watching the anime, there were some bits that went missing in the live action film adaptation. I don't remember anything specific (it's been nearly a year since I finished the anime), but the film definitely felt sparser and disjointed in comparison. Not having read the manga yet, I can't draw many comparisons there, unfortunately. But in skipping around to try and find the scene where Hagita in the film says, "This isn't a manga!" (to see if the manga makes the same joke or a similar one about movies), I noticed several differences. The whole situation involving Kakeru's grandmother, meeting up at the festival, and the athletic meet are all quite heavily modified for the film. The anime, as I recall, treated all of those scenes I noted as being different in the film much closer to how the manga source did them, and I think it was the stronger adaptation for that.

I could sit here and drag myself into doing scene-by-scene comparisons (I totally would; it's very tempting), but the point of doing so would be to further illustrate my conclusion: My rating is lower than I would have predicted because I had high expectations based on how amazing the anime adaptation was, and the film didn't live up to them. I believe that with some tightening of the screenplay and a revision to more closely follow the original (spoiler: [spoilers]I just wanted to see Naho in a cheerleader outfit, of course[/spoilers]), this movie would have been much more compelling.

Not that it wasn't compelling. I just got unexpectedly bored in between the compelling bits.