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As a fan of this series I am very disappointed in it. I'm writing this review because there doesn't seem to be a negative review here as far as I can see.

The story was strong although it cut out some very important parts from the manga, effectively skipping the nuance in the fights and in the characterisation. There are some great parallels in the characters.

The soundtrack sucked, it was mixed poorly and the songs never matched up with the fights. Often times I would find myself questioning why a song was playing. (or a lack of it) I really wouldn't be surprised if the sound ... director was out of a job after this travesty. The ending song was good though.

The fight animations felt excruciatingly lacklustre: zoomed in CG combat is a cardinal sin, random distant zoom outs to the point where you can hardly see the action, wonky framerates in places. There is a LOT of needless CG animated which was awful to look at. They also overused an awful particle effect with lots of moving black particles which didn't look good the first time they used it, let alone the next 30 times. I have literally no idea who thought it was a good idea.

The voice acting was practically the only saving grace of this floundering failure of an adaptation. Some highlights are Kugimiya Rie who kills it as Beatrice; Kadowaki Mai who does a fantastic job as Illya as per usual; and Hanae Natsuki who really managed to share the pain of being Julian.

In conclusion, this movie is heavily carried by its source material and voice actors. Most of the successes can be attributed to its origin manga which is genuinely good; the only thing the adaptation really feels like it added were the voices which is, however, a shallow victory considering the things that were lost. I really wanted it to be better, but alas, it wasn't.