{Spoilers}
Oh my goodness this was so amazing I can't even begin to really explain why. It's so visually breath-taking. Even in 720 p I could still tell what a beautiful thing I was watching. All of it was so beautiful; the comet, the scenery, them! The duality that's shown when it's the two of them on the mountain standing right next to each other, the only barrier between them being time, was absolutely breathtaking. Also at the beginning all of the time lapses? Those were great. Not only that, but the music was so great. It was mellow and kind of whimsical and the lyrics themselves were playful and contemplative. These two were already jaw-dropping amazing and well worth rewatching just to relive the artistically beautiful visual and audio aspect of the movie.
BUT WAIT THAT'S NOT ALL! Not just was it visually stunning which is already off the charts amazing, but the story line is amazing. It's kind of a mix of two of my top favorite anime movies The Girl Who Leaped Through Time and Five Centimeters per Second. It has the time aspect from The Girl Who Leaped Through Time in that Mitsuha lives in a timeline 3 years shifted backwards from Taki's time. This causes discrepancies and ultimately the conflict arises from this problem of time. It's truly beautiful in that the plot line is allowed to develop naturally. The two characters when they realize what's happening and that they're switching lives with each other randomly react in a relatively realistic way. The two of them try to make do as the other and disrupt the other's life as little as possible, or in Mitsuha's case she tried to improve Taki's life by setting him up on a date with his crush. But through this problem the two of them have to overcome, they begin to form a strong bond of camaraderie against this problematic situation. In this way it seems only natural for Taki to develop feelings for this girl that he's getting to know on a closer level than anyone else he knows.
The real heart-breaker though is that because of their time difference and the comet during the Autumn Festival, they never meet. At this point my soul kind of died and I thought to myself 'well there goes yet another sunken ship' until I realized that this was just the first climax in this cleverly dual climatic plot. Oh ho ho folks the show's not over yet. After this first traumatic experience when Taki realizes that he can't switch with Mitsuha anymore, he goes on a quest to her hometown only to find that it's been wrecked by the comet, leaving everyone he had encountered through her dead. This traumatic experience leads him up into the crater of a mountain where he is able to time travel back 3 years before the disaster to help Mitsuha survive this time. The two of them are able to meet once during twilight and when Taki wrote 'I love you' on Mitsuha's hand and when she saw it later, my heart melted. It really is the little things that make movies like these go from amazing to fantastic! This time when they're able to alter the timeline it seems like everything is going to go well and everyone will end up happily ever after...haha I don't think so. Life isn't so simple. Fictional life? Even less simple. The new problem is the two of them can't remember the other's name nor their time switching bodies. This is a problem because the two of them feel an absence in their life, but can't exactly explain what it is. In fact when Taki sees Tessie and Sayaka as an engaged couple he feels a vague sense of deja vu but nothing more. This frustration is infuriating. I've watched this and invested all my feelings into this and all you're giving me is deja vu and missed opportunities to find your girl?! It brings back trauma from watching Five Centimeters per Second. Speaking of that, at the end when they both run off the train to see the other and almost walk opposite ways of the stairs without even meeting eyes it brought me back to the real trauma of Five Centimeters per Second's ending. That was traumatic. This ending however wasn't so traumatic. In fact it was sweet and left a hopeful note for their future together.
All in all this is a definite must watch if you enjoy anime movies or even just anime. This has great music, fantastic art, and a story line that just got me so emotionally invested in the characters. This was seriously fantastic and if you haven't watched it yet you're seriously missing out on a magical time. Worth the hype? Most definitely.
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