People... of course she picks the building, over Kousuke, the kid is a brat and an asshole
The only time they barely managed to have a proper talk it ends with them having a half conversation, in which the end result was her still blaming herself for everything, while Kousuke not only keep his end of the blame out of the discussion but also manages to re-frame the problem from "this is all your fault because you bottle up your feelings" to "this is all your fault because your are a crybaby", and as thus for her nothing has changed and everyone is better off without her being there, which is the main reason she was visiting the building, unable to let go, and talking with her shit childhood friend only helped to confirm her ideas of being unwanted and unneeded
Being things like that, of course she is gonna stay with the building
Then in an asspull after the show ran out of time he comes back for her, with the help of a magical ferris wheel the story never foreshadowed, telling her and confirming that yes, everything is pretty much her fault, but that despite she being a mess, an idiot, and several other insults, she is still family on virtue of them just having spend too much time together, because he never tells her anything positive, and as thus despite being someone with little to no redeeming qualities, she shouldn't just leave...
So now she knows that her closest friend, does thinks she is indeed a horrible person, but at least he thinks of her as family, pretty crappy situation, so of course she will still care about the building, the building is not giving her shit
Which is by no means what he should have told her, but is what we got, and for us to get that pittance of development and she had to pretty much die twice
Then it is shown at the very end on an inner monologue that he never apologized to her for being an asshole, it is the one thing his grandpa told him to do before dying, and the one thing that could have helped solve the her worries, and the one thing he actually had to do, and even after months passed after his adventure, he still couldn't do...
The building at least properly tried to listen to her and reassure without shitting on her
And yes Reina was extremely annoying and pointless, and her existence never justifies itself, she barged uninvited into the boy's ghost hunting adventure (reminder that Taishi was the one that got the idea of going into a haunted building, but at least he had the decency of never pointing fingers for the mess he dragged everyone else into, and technically he is at fault for getting the other 2 boys into the mess), then blamed everyone else for some shit she got herself into despite having no business being there.
And she really has no business being there, and by there i mean in the story itself, she starts as an outsider entitled brat, and ends it as an outsider entitled brat, her only character development, if we can even call it that, was figuring out that people can grow attached to places that conform parts of their personal history, and that happens off-screen, and had no real impact on how she deals with others, let alone on how she deals with Natsume, because as a complete outsider she has no idea just what kind of significance the building has for Natsume, her growth starts and ends at "old places can be precious things too", which is somehow more growth than what the other 3 support kids got, which is pretty much nothing, nothing happens with them, they come and leave being the same people
In the end this would have worked better if it had been a 20 minute short of just Natsume dealing with her insecurities and Noppo being there to reassure her about not wanting to die with the building, everyone else was a dispensable extra that exist just to add padding to the story, Kousuke could have barged in near the end, after it is revealed that Natsume went missing for a month, apologize to her for being and asshole, and then it ends, we get the same story, in less time, with less grievances, hell you can perfectly get rid of Kousuke too, and just make it about Natsume and her mom
Aesthetics aside (visuals, sound, movement) which were quite good, the story of the movie was a 5/10, it is an average anime, actually if we look at the kind of... stuff that is out there in the world of anime, we could even say that by anime standards, this is actually quite good, and then by movie standards, then yeah it was bad it is not a story worth 2 hours specially for what little payoff it gives, you can get a better experience with 20 minutes less elements, and the same message |