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I'm going to go against the grain and rate this move poorly compared to other people as well as compared to how I would rate the Natsume series overall.

Spoilers below.

This movie would have been a lot more effective if it had been reduced to one or two ~23 minute episodes. It was only about an hour into the film when the film finally decides to tell you what the film is actually about: Mukuo and Yorie.

It's not super difficult to find ways to shorten this film. For instance, a putative episode could have opened up with Natsume's mom asking him to go to Gochou (sp?), ... Natsume and Nyanko-sensei going, Nyanko running off and visiting the tree and getting the seed, and Natsume meeting the woman who recognizes him, says he looks familiar, and him asking her if she knew Reiko. The film spent thirty minutes on the two trips to Gochou and some side material. This could have been reduced down to say ten minutes by combining the two trips into one, and cutting the other material that just waters down and distracts from what the plot is really about.

And that's the problem with the film. Beyond the film taking so long to reveal what it's even about (Mukuo and Yorie), the film never actually gives Mukuo and Yorie the screen time they deserve. Instead, the film wastes its time with so much else that their importance gets pushed into the background.

The film has a strong hook: a woman loses her son and a youkai mimics him and replaces him and the woman's memory of his death. And yet, never once did I cry during this film, because the film completely squanders its story.

And consider the film's subtitle: Ephemeral Bonds. This theme isn't actually present in the film. This theme doesn't apply to Natsume's friends or family. You can argue the theme applies to Nyanko because Natsume misses being able to talk to Nyanko when he's split up. But that's a weak and unexplored theme in the film. At best the theme applies to Mukuo and Yorie, but again, they get so little screen time that the theme doesn't really do any work with them.

It's not a shock to discover that this movie was an anime original story not written (albeit "supervised") by the original manga author.

Slight spoilers ahead.

I have two main criticisms for this show.

The first criticism addresses a problem that the show somewhat successfully solves, though there remains room for improvement. The problem has to do with how to handle the repetitious showing of each skater's programs. The songs are the same, the performance is the same, the only main difference is whether the skater lands their jumps. The show's solution is largely to use this as an opportunity to show us the character's state of mind, not just as it pertains to how their performance is going, but how their performance relates to their larger concerns and anxieties ... about their career and life goals.

The show alternatively could have used new performances each time the skater appeared on the ice, though this probably would have required more effort on the animators' part, and might have been taken creative liberties with its depiction of professional figure skating. The idea here is that these new performances would be reflections of the character's state of mind at the time, possibly forgoing the need for an internal monologue.

The show in very few occasions utilizes this idea of reflecting a character's state of mind in their physical performance: Yuri in his first few short program performances opens up increasingly erotically, and Michele Crispino's (brother to Sala Crispino) second performance that we see is far more melancholic than his first one, reflecting his reaction to his sister's separation. These are good, but the only instances I recall.

I would have liked to have seen this method pursued further, particularly since the internal monologues, while themselves effective (albeit somewhat a crude way of presenting the same information), end up falling short due to weaknesses in the show's narrative, which brings up my second and largest point.

The show's narrative is far too quick. The show sets up this arc for Yuri where he'll come to learn what love or eros is, which largely concludes halfway through, rendering his skating performances less interesting. Yuri(o), who was set up as Yuri's rival, receives far less attention than Yuri. There's some interesting potential with Yuri(o), but we're instead left with asides rather than developments: for instance, Yuri(o)'s concern that he'll soon physically mature in a way that will mean having to alter his skating style. Victor, despite receiving the second most amount of air time, receives possibly even less narrative attention than Yuri(o).

All the other skaters receive interesting attention, but again, it's done far too quickly without really establishing the characters, exploring them and their backgrounds, and then developing them, their issues and resolutions.

I believe that had this show been twice as long, and properly attentive, this could have been an easy 9 out of 10.

Some spoilers below, be you warned.

There are several ways in which one can engage in criticism.

There are objective determinations on which one can base their criticism. There are also criticisms that come from biases and presumptions that one as an individual have and want to see, presumptions and biases which others might not share. To some extent, there's overlap and ambiguity in the delineation between these two styles of criticism. In a trivial way, what is typically seen as objectively bad writing might not bother someone else out of apathy. For instance, a central drama or conflict which becomes resolved without any proper build up ... towards that resolving (viz., deus ex machina). In less trivial ways, individuals may share different substantive views on the moral responsibility involved with storytelling.

The issues I find most arresting about this film come more from the latter than the former, but I did want to express the idea that this film had some issues on this front: a number of scenes could have been cut without any harm done to the film's narrative integrity (if there ever was any) which served no purpose; a number of scene or shot transitions were noticeably rough (the atomic bombing scene as well as the rapid transitions in the beginning portions of the film come first to mind); there's a lot of thematic inconsistency (note the art direction, the main character's childish naivete and aloofness, in contrast to some of the darker themes later on, which aren't themselves that well developed or strongly held onto); similar to the previous point, but some of the darker themes (Suzu's depression, Suzu's wish for the war to continue) are introduced and dropped real quickly without buildup, and certainly without resolution.

On this last point I can imagine some who would disagree. They might argue that Suzu's wish for the war to continue comes from all that she's sacrificed. What Suzu has "sacrificed" for the war however isn't very clear. A lot of the labor she's performed in the film has simply been from her position as a wife in Japan in the early 20th century, much of the seriousness of her labor is further reduced by the naivete of Suzu and the lighthearted approach of the film which seems to take no interest in displaying Suzu's labor here as what would be seen today as a loss of liberty. Without having access to these grounds for Suzu's exhortations, the disagreer is forced to say that Suzu's sacrifice comes from the loss of her hand and Harumi, but Suzu's relationship with Harumi isn't well developed. In any case, the conclusion seems to be that Harumi and Suzu's hand are lost to ground Suzu's wish for continued war, which makes the point seem forced. And for what? A single scene which is completely abandoned once we've transition to the next.

What was most arresting about this film however was its glossed naivete. Our main character, Suzu, is a character without much thought or intelligence behind her. This is not a character well suited for viewing the Second World War and what it meant. As I discussed in other ways before, Suzu's naivete actually collides with the narrative at certain points. For instance, Suzu's wish for the war's continuance when she has never expressed any feeling or thought about the war or what it means. This film could have used such a character's naivete to make a point, but this film didn't seem interested in that. There was no dramatic irony in the early bits of the film when Suzu is married off and is forced to labor for her new family. The film doesn't treat this as if we, the viewer, know better about what's going on than Suzu does. It instead plays it lightheartedly.

The sharpest expression of this naivete, was the contrast between the character designs and the moral context of the film's very setting. It strikes me as not an accident that all the characters in the film are designed with childlike intimations. The film seems to wish for the viewer to view the characters as innocent children. This is a very troubling request given the moral dynamics of the Second World War, and Japan's role therein.

This may or may not have been intentional. I'd actually have a lot more respect for the film had it not only been intentional, but had it been part of a larger message or purpose. I don't view this film harshly because of some perceived immorality to it, I view it harshly because it offers no artistic or narrative contribution to the subject of Japan in the Second World War, has seriously flawed writing, all the while contributing aimlessly to a morally problematic viewpoint with contemporary ramifications.