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This movie is my new favorite movie.

Disclaimer: I am not really a fan of Trigger's other works. I never finished Gurran Lagan (found it too bogged down in filler) and never got around to watching Kill La Kill.

~minor spoilers~

Story:
The story explores the themes of global warming, neo-capitalism / neo-libralism, and minority identities in a way that is beautifully interwoven with the story and art of the movie. The themes naturally tie in with and reinforce each other.
The pacing is brutal and fantastic. Aside from a few breaths of air, the story moves at a breakneck pace and doesn't bother to hold your hand. Yet ... it isn't confusing or hard to follow. (Except for one part which is lampshaded by the appropriate character and takes the time to explain itself more) the dialogue and story beats are tight - they explain / cover exactly what they need to and move on. There is only one scene (ice lake) that I felt like dragged on a bit long.

Characters:
The characters are extremely diverse in values, and all respresent different political philosophies. The heroes are extremely likable and are a joy to watch. I found myself extremely attached to the two leads. Watching them go down their separate arcs and develop together is a joy.
The villian is basically a white supremacist Elon Musk, enabled by a neoliberal society, and the movie feels particularly poignant in it's condemnation of him and his philosophy.
The side characters aren't particularly fleshed out but that makes them no less effective at their roles in the plot. Still, their personalities and values come across easily.
One criticism I have with the movie is one I have with most anime, which is that the women in the film don't play a huge role and the main female lead is boring. But that's kind of what I've come to expect.

Music:
The music conveys both mourning and triumph with masterful execution. The fight scenes are paired with enthusiastic music and the sound design makes the universe feel real. The voice acting (Japanese) is incredible and the actors convey the emotions of their characters expertly.
One particular track, lio's theme / kakusei, conveys his character / emotions while being an amazing song. I've been listening to it on repeat since I saw the movie.

Animation / Art / Design:
This is one of my favorite parts of the film. The design informs every part of the film, especially the theming, amazingly.
The color design informs the world: burnish are colored purple and in natural hues, reflecting their passion and connection to the natural world.
The Burning Rescue is given innocent blues and reds and the characters within it are given soft, curved exteriors, representing their purity.
The city / establishment is mostly given a unnatural, fake white exterior, mixed with the black hues and impossible size of the Freeze Force. This monochrome color palette contrasts with the Burnish palette and the burning rescue color palette in a way that is both meaningful and extremely stylish.
I would recommend pairing this movie with a blunt, if you have access to such. The art is so beautiful and awesome.

Enjoyment:
This movie came at a relevant time for many, including me. In a world where the the news cycle feels unrelenting and disturbing, this movie inspires hope and sincere kindness. In that way, I find it pays tribute to the genre of shounen, and it's enthusiasm. It gives me hope, even though the world feels weighted by climate change.
I loved the canon gay representation. The emotional bond of the characters is so meaningful. Huge props to whomever decided to just go for it, it makes the movie even better.
This movie is an emotional whirlwind, and I loved every second of it.

Gay/10

I don't like this movie. If you do, that's great! I'm only writing this to warn people who, like me, might find this movie to be a waste of their time, and not to say anything negative about the fans of this movie.

Story - 1
I think the story, premise wise, is alright. A boy who used to be a bully tries to become friends with his old victim. However, in execution, I think this anime fails spectacularly.
The pacing, for one thing, is extremely weird. I'm fairly sure this movie was supposed to cover several months, but I never really got a clear sense of what ... happened when. All the scenes seemed to kind of blend together, with no sense of how much time had passed in between scenes.
I didn't feel like the characters really got anywhere, or even did much of anything. And yeah, it's a drama, but that's not really an excuse. It feels like they almost went through a checklist to make this whole thing.
-Establish cute heroine
-Gather childhood friends
-Have the characters forgive themselves/others.
-Have main characters fall in love.
This last point was the one that really stood out to me. Why does Nishimiya suddenly fall in love with Ishida? Because he's nice to her? If I fell in love with everyone who was nice to me, I would be in a lot of trouble.
No, it's not because there's any logical reason. It's because this movie needs to sell copies. I felt like that justification could fit a lot of the questions I had watching this movie. The whole experience just felt like it was engineered to be another Clannad/Anohana tearjerker, and not to stand on it's own merits. Maybe this would had worked, but I couldn't get absorbed into the experience at all. Mostly because of the awful characters.
The story is also fairly slow, with few scenes I really felt moved the plot forward or developed the characters. I don't mind slow pacing, but not when it serves nothing but to pad the movie out, and nothing else.

I'm going to get away from the actual story a bit, and talk about something that bothered me. The way mental health is portrayed in this anime is a little misleading, at best, and actively harmful at worst.
At the start of the show, the main character is planning his suicide. That itself, is fine. It felt fairly realistic to me, and I appreciate when anime explores dark themes. What DID bother me was when his mother found out. She makes it all about herself, saying "How could you do this to me?" and making him promise he won't kill himself. She NEVER listens to why he feels this way, or makes ANY attempt to try to help him or get him professional help. Honestly, this kind of reaction, while only making the situation worse by making the suicidal person feel shamed and pathetic, DOES happen in real life quite often. What I have a problem with is how the movie handles this. She apologizes later, and by the tone of the movie and her being so easily forgiven, it sends the message that this is an appropriate way to respond to learning someone is going to kill themself. The movie then pretends that just by saying he won't kill himself, he's magically fixed, and never again thinks about or attempts suicide. I wish I had known years ago that the only way to stop feeling suicidal is to just tell myself that I won't do it! /s

Seriously, IF YOU HAVE A FRIEND WHO YOU THINK IS SUICIDAL:
DO NOT MAKE IT ABOUT YOURSELF. The only appropriate thing to do is to listen to them, and let them feel heard. Don't threaten them, and do not blame them. They are already dealing with difficult feelings, by blaming them all you do is make them feel worse. Try to get them help. If they won't accept it, be there for them as best you can.

*SPOILERS*



This reappears later in the movie, when waifuchan- I mean Nishimiya- also tries to kill herself. She's told that, "Everyone has suffering, so you just need to accept the bad parts of yourself". What bad parts does she even have? Her deafness, I guess? That's more of a challenge than a character flaw. Anyways, this sentiment is equally as grating. Because, obviously, depressed people just need a lecture and they'll see everything as sunshine and rainbows.
Which is essentially how this movie ends. Ishida has a revelation, and his depression is cured! I don't think the writers of this anime have struggled with mental illness. Getting better is a long, sometimes torturous process, that sometimes feels pointless. It's slow, and takes a lot of work. Nobody just wakes up and suddenly their mental illness is gone.



*END SPOILERS*

Art - 5
It's KyoAni. Of course the art is going to be good looking. I wasn't really impressed, though. There wasn't anything creative about color use, or shot composition, or creative visual metaphors.
Well, there is one visual metaphor, but it's a long stretch from 'creative'. To show that Ishida doesn't want to hear certain people, an X is placed over their face. I only found this extremely distracting. I know it's a cliche at this point, but why not just black out their faces, or maybe have the camera angles shot in such a way to not show their faces?
Other than that, I didn't really feel like there was much detracting, in the way of artwork. This isn't exactly art related, but why did the anime hide the black guy for so long? It showed the rest of the family near the start of the movie, and Ishida's brother-in-law is only shown at the end, as if it's supposed to be some kind of funny revelation. What is funny about a character being black? I guess that's Japan for you, but it felt kind of scummy.

Sound - 4
I didn't really notice the music, for the most part, which is kind of the problem. The music never added anything for me. I noticed in particular during one emotional scene that there was no music. Was that deliberate? Who knows!
The voice acting was alright. Pretty standard anime fare. I was a little worried, going into this movie, that Nishimiya would go from not talking to having a perfect anime girl voice. I thought her voice was pretty convincing. I don't think I'm the greatest judge, because I've only heard deaf people talk via TV shows, but I was convinced. I looked up the voice actress to see if she was actually deaf, because I thought she might be. (She wasn't. I think it might have been better to have an actual deaf person, but I don't think it's too big of a deal)

Characters - 2
Oh boy, where do I start?
The biggest problem I have with the characters in this anime is that they lack any depth. It was obvious there was an attempt to give them depth, but this creates what irritated me perhaps the most about this movie: The characters are only portrayed as completely good or completely bad depending on what the movie wants you to feel at that specific time. When the characters are supposed to be seen as 'bad' they behave in completely disgusting ways. Then, later, the movie pretends they've gone through some kind of arch by having them apologize for it later, and never act that way again. I can excuse this in the case of Ishida- He's grown up significantly, and has gone through enough suffering to develop empathy. But the others- Nishimiya's mother and sister, and Kawai, for the most part- it just feels extremely fake.
Ishida was probably my favorite character out of all of them, but that only means that I found him slightly less obnoxious and unbelievable than the rest of the cast. I understand why he does most of what he does, and his character is bland, but in a way I could see a real kid turning out. I don't like that he never seems to take initiative and actually DO anything (Stand up to the one bully, tell his classmates who were bad-mouthing him to fuck off, go past the sister when she says he can't see Nishimiya) but again, that's the sort of issue I could understand a real teenager having.
Nishimiya is what I like to call 'waifu-bait'. She's so bland, so vanilla, so forgiving, that most weeb viewers will want her merchandise and dakimakura. What are her interests? What does she do in her free time? Is there anything unlikable about her whatsoever? Can you answer these questions? I don't think you really could. It feels like a deliberate choice on the part of the writers/ directors, in my opinion, to not give her any strong personality traits, so as to not alienate any viewers. It could be argued that they wanted to portray her sympathetically, to not make it seem like she's unlikable because she's deaf, I suppose. But as a pansexual man, the only gay characters who offend me are terribly written ones. I can't speak for the deaf audience, but if I were deaf, I would be angry to be portrayed in such a mindless, creatively-dead way.
Then there's Ueno. She's straight-up a bitch. I don't think they were even trying to show her as anything more than a mean, one-dimensional character. I know soooo many people in real life who are just mean for no reason, and never attempt to even think rationally. /s She only exists in this movie to be the villain, and nothing more.
I already kind of covered Nishimiya's family. They go from completely unlikable to saints in the span of about ten seconds. I don't really have anything more to say.
The only other character I think it worth mentioning is the best friend character, Nagatsuka. (Did you remember his name? I sure didn't!) He's fairly annoying, although in the way I could sort of relate to. I've had loud, kind of weird friends before, and they've been some of the best friends I've ever had. So his involvement in the movie was maybe the only time I could see myself in the character's shoes. I didn't like the way he seemed very... comic-relief, I suppose? He would be saying very serious stuff, but I felt as though the movie didn't want me to take him seriously. The way he was drawn was, I think, the biggest factor in this. He's a fairly serious character in a pretty serious movie, and yet, KyoAni drew him as a blob. Between him and Haru from Accel World, I'm beginning to wonder if any of these animators have ever actually seen a fat person. As someone who has, having such an unrealistic character took me out of the movie somewhat. I might be the only person bothered by this, but oh well.
Everyone else is forgettable, in my opinion. One-dimensional background characters.

Entertainment - 2
I really felt like this movie felt very 'anime'. It wasn't trying to tell a good story, or trying to show its audience any nuance or complexity. It is made to sell merchandise. I honestly wish it had entertained me. I don't go into shows thinking, "Oh boy, I can't wait to hate this show and drag down its MAL score!" I wanted to like this movie. But when the story is so bland and the characters so inhuman and obnoxious, I just can't.

As soon as I saw this show's description I knew I had to see it. I love religious humor, and I grew up in a semi-Christian religion, so I think I know enough to appreciate the Christian humor, at least.
The only part I ended up liking is the original premise. I didn't find this funny. At all. I think it might be because the show didn't go far enough in it's humor, so as to not offend religious anime watchers. Also, I don't know very much about Hinduism, so that could have affected my enjoyment. Still, I didn't find any of Jesus's humor funny. ... It's fairly slice-of-life, which might be holding it back some. If it showed more situations or things going on, I might have liked it more. As it stands, I thought the whole story was pretty shallow.
The art and sound are fine. People have different styles of comedy they like, so you might want to check this out anyways. It's short enough to not waste too much of your time.

I'm actually surprised I got through this whole anime. I knew I hated it halfway through, but I also wanted to finish it to see if it would get any better somehow, or, at the very least, to be able to say I finished it.

Story - 2
I think the story starts off decently well. Initially, I liked the darker tone it seemed to be going for, and I was curious about the supernatural elements, as well as the overall setting the story takes place in. The anime proceeds, past the beginning episodes, to have episodes focused on side characters and random towns that have ... nothing of value - no character development, no real world building. The only thing these episodes might be helping is to contribute to some thematic elements, but honestly, after watching the whole show, I have no idea what those elements would be. When the questions the series opens with are answered, mostly about the nature of wolves and flower maidens, the answers are vague and unsatisfying. I never felt like I had a good grasp on what the point of all the 'paradise' related parts of the story served. Near the end of the story I was confused, because there was no explanation of the world or many of the characters in it. The tone also suffers- not as badly as I've seen in other shows, granted - because the dark, gritty, initial tone is surpassed by a middle-of-the-road standard adventure tone. There is a scene later on (Beginning of episode 22) that is needlessly dark, with no buildup whatsoever.
Overall, I felt like the story in this could have made for an average movie. But they tried to stretch the content of the show over 26 episodes and it just feels so incredibly bland because of that.

Art - 7
The artwork is gorgeous, especially so if you enjoy looking at attractive men. There is an obvious level of care put into the animation, and the character designs are stellar, for the most part. (Some of Darcia's outfits were just silly looking.) I only wish there were more scenes that didn't take place in such bland looking towns.

Sound - 8
The music is fantastic. The background music always felt very appropriate for each scene, and, if I were as emotionally invested in the characters as I usually am, it probably would have added to my enjoyment significantly. I really liked the song for the OP, and I loved all the songs with lyrics that played during the show.
The voice acting is alright. I switched from the Japanese audio to the dub about twenty episodes in, because I was bored of watching the show and needed to look at something else while I was listening to it. Anyways, the Japanese voice acting is good. The English dub is passable. It's nothing to write home about, but it isn't an abomination to the ears like some dubs.

Characters - 1
This is by far my least favorite part of the show. The characters are bland and one-dimensional. They have no goals save going to 'paradise'. I would actually be into this, if they were shown to be so at odds with the world around them that the only thing they had was chasing after some myth. But we know so little about the characters themselves. We only get tiny details of the main four's backstories, and what we do get doesn't really justify their motivations. The show does repeatedly say that 'the wolves are drawn to paradise', but I refuse to accept that. It's just lazy character writing.
Anyways, the characters can essentially be summarized in a few words each.
Kiba - Generic hero. Stoic. Leader for no particular reason.
Tsume - Grumpy. Kind of a dick. He follows the 'jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold' trope even though there doesn't really seem to be any reason for his character to act that way.
Toboe - Innocent. Emotional.
Hige - Comic relief.
I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with simple characters. The problem is that there's nothing interesting or relatable about these characters, for me. There are a few moments in the show where there was an obvious attempt to develop the characters, but these moments just feel incredibly forced. For example, there is an episode where one of the characters decides he doesn't want to journey to paradise anymore. At the end of the episode, he changes his mind, in a way that is obviously meant to imply that he has grown since his initial decision. But nothing happens to him in between during the episode to warrant this change. Another example, near the end of the show, is when a character says, "That's not what the (name) I know would say!" the other character then proceeds to go on a completely unwarranted identity crisis. Before this scene, I never got the impression that he had even struggled with anything of the sort. It was so jarring and unexpected that I burst out laughing.
The show also focused on three side characters (Cher, Hubb, and Quent) who are all completely boring, and mostly exist to give exposition about wolves or prophesies. I cared about them even less than the main four, and yet they were given nearly as much time on screen. The two noble characters seemed vaguely interesting, but so little is said about them until later, where suddenly they start talking about what happened between them in the very last episode. The climax of the story suffers greatly due to this, because the viewer is trying to piece together the backstory right at the end.
Oh, and there's Cheza. She has no personality, and only exists to further the almost no existent plot. Also, to force in a love interest, because every piece of media seems to think that's necessary. *Sigh*

Enjoyment - 2
This anime sat on the 'watching' section of my list for a year. Watching this show became a chore for me after about four episodes. I actually fell asleep at one point watching this, which is a first for me. I really wanted to like this show. It's so pretty and the music is nearly perfect. But I couldn't get past the awful writing. It tries to be deep, but only in that pretentious way through 'symbolism' and 'theme', without knowing what each of those mean. If I can't clearly identify these 'hidden meanings' then they mean nothing to me. Mawaru Peguindrum has symbolism. Psycho-Pass has strong thematic elements. In both cases, the shows stand well enough on their own to be enjoyable without fully grasping these deeper meanings. And I would recommend both miles above this anime.