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(this review spoils my interpretation of Sonny Boy)
//this review was written in notepad

I was 18 and just got out of the cinema with my dad.
I don't remember the movie that we saw, just that I
had loved it.
On our way home I remember him asking me: "What did you
get out of the movie?" And I thought, and thought,
and thought some more, and then I told him "well, that's
hard to say". I couldn't come up with an answer or even
... an interpretation of the movie that I thought I had loved.

And from that point on, I started thinking much more
about the media that I saw. It was still hard to truly
express my feelings, but I got better with time. I gained
some confidence and started using big words like
character delevelopment and pacing of a story without
knowing exactly what they meant. And as time passed
and my pretenciousness level had risen, I started growing
more a fan of weird & experimental media. Movies, music and,
you guessed it, anime. Watching shows like SEL, Angells
Egg, ghost in the shell...etc brought tears to my eyes
because while I couldn't understand the "deeper meaning
the director was trying to tell us", I could have fun
in trying to figure out my own path or my own interpretation.
Because after all, the way we are and the way we enjoy
shows is unique to each of us.

And finally, if you're still here after this long long
introduction, I'll talk about Sonny Boy now.

Sonny Boy is an experience. I heard many people call it
too deep to understand, well, that's some of the point.
You're don't really need to understand every single detail.
It's like walking in a museum. Each painting tells a different
story, but you don't really need to know the context behind it,
the techniques used or the metaphors it tries to convey to think
it's beautifull.

The imagination to create each world in Sonny Boy is something
that I love. In that aspect it reminded me a lot of "the little
prince" (by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). Each world worked
differently but they all followed the same logic,
"conquer the world, get a reward".

There was a world made of 2d mouses and once they
conquered it, they got a computer mouse called
Armstrong that looked alive and put it in a little
hamster case. There was another where one of the characters
told the story of the monkey baseball league that was hapenning.
There was another one where there were workers building
a tower, but intead of taking the bricks up, they were
going down the stairs with them (because the world was
upside down). Come on!!! But with that said, not every episode
was a banger. I'll admit I didn't care too much about the plague
episode's characters, but visually, it was still amazing.

The color palette is bright, colorfull and most of all, fun. I hadn't
seen an anime that looked this good since Bishounen
Tanteidan from spring this year. And when it's darker
and less saturated, it's because the narrative calls
for it, like in the babel tower episode. There's also
these instances where the camera pans far away from the
characters and they kind of morph into the background,
and their eyes dissapear, almost like they are no longer there.
Again, each shot from the show is a painting that could
be in a museum which would be called my screenshot
library.

About the sound design, ever since I watched Eizouken
I've been more impressed when a show doesn't use the
same 16 or so stock sounds every other show uses. Same as
wonder Egg priority, just to name a recent one, when the
characters are fiddling with the tea mug or walking on
the snow, you hear the actuall sounds. You'd think this
is not that important, but when a show does it well
it's that much more impressive to me.

And since we're talkiing about sounds, I think I'm gonna
listen to the OST for a long long time. It feels like
a coming of age/ summery soundtrack, and it gives the
show this feel like you're in vacation, which is ironic
when you conside they are stuck in the beach one day before
graduating.

Because of this and that, the show reminded me very much
of the time I watched Angells Egg, because it's like
the oposite of that movie. Unlike the dark, athmospheric world of
the Oshii film, which talks about how ingenuous it is to
have faith (or at least that's what I got from it), Sonny boy is also
a story about beliving and having faith to reach the light and the
end of the world. This is the mentality of Nozomi, the character
that stuck with me the most. She reminds me of Kamina
from Gurren Laggan, because they're both characters that
make you want to follow them. It's the type of character
that makes everything feel possible, and inspires you
to pursue your dreams even if they seem impossible.

The 2 others of the "main trio" are Mizuho and Nagara.
Mizuho is the one that smiles at the end. She's the one
that cries when Rajdhani is leaving on his journey and
when Nozomi dies. Mostly, she's the one that feels the hardest,
and the one that carries many of the show's heavier emotions.
It's hard to say what makes this character click, and why
she is best girl, but she is the one who sticks around Nagara
untill the end.

Nagara is nothing but a great protagonist, and the way
director Shingo Natsume shows us his arc is through
very good visual storytelling. The show starts with
Nagara laying on the floor, depressed and not interested in the
world around him, and by the end, he's running away
from this world, and in a way, from his old self.

Is there anything else?
Oh, right, how could I forget about the pacing. It's godlike
S-tier incredible. Each episode takes
us on a journey and lets us explore the worlds the
characters live in, and the show gives us time to
marvel with these worlds. It feels calm, but not booring.
Almost relaxing in a sense. As mentioned before, not every
episode is a banger, but even in the less inspired
episodes, I found many things to enjoy, and it made
me think that probably I would like them more on a
rewatch.

Maybe this review was a bit all over the place, but I
just wanted to say that I liked this anime a lot, and
wether you liked this anime or not, I didn't really write
this to try to convince anyone that the anime is good, but
more so to share with you my opinion on this show.
I liked Sonny Boy a lot, and would like to see more anime that
try to challenge the norm and make something inspiring
that shows the care of the people who made it, like this
one.

Let me finish this review by answering the question my
father asked me manny years ago: What did I get out
of this?

well... that'shard to say