Seishun Buta Yarou wa Randoseru Girl no Yume wo Minai

This movie felt like an old friend. It's been years since I've watched the ending of the series, and I've skipped two movies in between, but watching it was an easy return to what I enjoyed about the Bunny Girl senpai. (I refuse to call it the Dreaming Rascal series, I only do watch it for Mai.)

This movie had an air of finality around it. Sakuta's family arc has come full circle, and Sakuta is ready to move to the next level with Mai. I really like the poetic echo of the call back to the first arc of the series, with Sakuta experiencing Mai's ... "adolescence complex". Switching places meant Mai got the chance to save Sakuta, if she wanted it.

Really, this was a good place to end the series, even if it has several novels remaining and it is ongoing.

To be frank, I didn't quite enjoy the movie as much as the previous 2. The themes explored within this movie simply pale in comparison to what was shown in S1 and the previous movies. Sakura's conflicting feelings simply felt too distant for me to comprehend, though other viewers may think otherwise. I believe that the slow pacing and depiction of the problems experienced by the MC in the show simply didn't tug on my heartstrings.

However, I feel like the SOL scenes and the deepening of the relationship is more than worth watching the movie regardless. Major and minor characters make their appearance too ... and are enjoyable to watch.

The previous two movies on this series were great however this one just falls flat on its face. If you are reading this you are probably already familiar with how this series works, it's a character driven drama, where the climax is very important. So I'll be straight with why this movie is not as good as its preceding two: It's anticlimactic.

First 25 minutes of the movie is just entirely slice of life. Only around the 30th minute we're actually introduced to the main premise of the movie. And what I mean by 'slice of life' is entirely 'slice of life'. During Dreaming Girl, ... the slice of life portion of the movie was filled with build up for the premise of the movie. However, in this one there is barely any build up and we're suddenly hit by the adolescence syndrome out of nowhere, completely unannounced.

In Dreaming girl, we're shown compelling character drama after the very important revelation (that actually had build up). After that, we're shown two clear options: MC dies to save that girl or MC lives and stays with Mai. It puts us, the watcher, at the edge of our seats. However, in Knapsack kid, the MC just runs around talking to people and cries for no fucking reason for like 25% of the movie. No drama, no nothing. Nothing impressionable happened during the runtime of the show. I was like "is it already over?" when it finished.

The entire character arc is also just so shallow that the series would be the same if this movie never existed. This is the first time we're shown his mom and she's the cause for the adolescence syndrome. And the reason for the adolescence syndrome is actually way too unreasonable because the MC's feelings are hard to understand towards his mother. There could've been something else to give his adolescence syndrome some reason.

And the climax man, the MC just says a few lines while crying and then suddenly, the adolescence syndrome is cured and they start hugging while crying. This interaction took around 1 minute and that was the entire climax of the one hour movie.

To conclude, there was no character drama in this movie and you probably won't miss anything from not watching it. Waste of time.