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'And you don't seem to understand...'
This first line of the opening song has no right being this on point. It's almost as if the anime is mocking me for not keeping up with its convoluted story.

Man, I really wanted to like this one. I had been getting recommandations for this anime left and right and I finally sat down to check it out, expecting a complex, psychological sci-fi. I mean, this certainly was the essence of this anime if you look at it from really far away.
Starting off with the positives, the art style was truly something else, beautiful and at times ... striking imagery that is kind of unique, even for such an overabundant world as animation. There were many shots that clearly hinted at its 'avant-garde' nature, which I liked and would have loved to make into wallpapers and art print-outs to put on my wall.
However, this is unfortunately where the positives stop for me. The story was super complex and was confusing throughout the majority of the anime's runtime. It got to a point where I was mostly frustrated at myself for not being able to understand and angry at the anime for not explaining things enough. I do have to acknowledge though, that in a twisted way this was the beauty and hidden genius of it all: the plot had you guessing as to what would happen next and why certain characters acted or reacted the way they did. Still, don't expect to get a lot of resolution out of it all. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the ending was not satisfying and I found myself just sitting there like 'oh, ok then'. I am not going to spoil it, since I wouldn't even know what to say in order to get anything across about the story, it is just that perplexing.
Now some people will likely argue that Serial Experiments Lain is mind-blowing, but please do consider that this sentiment might stem from not knowing what they just experienced. You can either take this as something positive or negative, it is really up to you. I would say that everyone needs to watch this anime before judging it, however, I would definitely not recommend it to anyone who likes their stories clear-cut and easy to follow. I don't even know at this point if I enjoyed it or if my 23-year old brain is just not capable of grasping the meaning behind it. Or at least the deeper meaning and connections throughout, because I do get that it is supposed to be about different personas and mixing reality with the virtual world... I think...

Let me finish this off with another quote from the show: 'What isn't remembered never happened.' I will most likely remember this anime as being one of the most confusing ones out there and we'll see how much it sticks with me in the long run. At this point though, I can only say that the frustration I feel after finishing it almost makes me wish it never happned, as in that I never watched it. Guess I can only leave this with my eyebrows furrowed and a shrug for now.

Let me guess how you ended up here: you thought the movie title was similar to 'Your Name'? Because that is exactly how I ended up with this one.
WARNING: slight spoilers ahead (doesnt really matter though, trust me).

In short, if you want to watch something just to pass your time and don't care about plot or animation, you're at the right spot. I was intrigued at first and expected some cute romance with some supernatural elements, and on the surface, this is what this movie has to offer. In the beginning I thought it was cute, but as soon as the spiritual stuff ... started, something felt off. This is mainly because the animation becomes questionnable at times, one scene/character in particular that I found awful to look at was Requiem and his whole chasing or fighting scene. It was just so bland and felt like somebody hodgepodged everything together in MS Paint and a basic editing software.
The music was quite unremarkable, comes across like some royalty-free track you can find online. The scene with Mio singing did shift the tone, but felt like a number in a musical (not saying this is bad, it just seemed really unnatural for this story and threw me off quite a bit). Also, in my opinion this scene happened too early on plot-wise, as it felt like the conclusion type of deal, however, there was still like half of the movie left.
Regarding the plot itself, there were just way too many details that didn't make sense, were rendered unimportant towards the end or just felt too shallow, making it that you would sometimes have to play a guessing game of whether this or that is happening now, because you tried to piece everything together by yourself. For example, during the hospital scene towards the end when Arata seemed to have picked up Mio's presence in the hallway, only for her to disappear, really had a sense of finality to it and I legit thought she was gone. Only for her to reappear in some other place, resulting in me going 'oh so it isn't over yet, aw man'. Also sidenote, her crying before that scene got really awkward, I don't usually cringe at crying scenes, but this one just made me uncomfortable.
If you are wondering why I haven't said anything about the characters yet, it is because they are really bland and have only vague relationships. They are pretty to look at though, so at least their design is not half bad.

So yeah, it is a movie full of clichés and a stretched-out, half-explained, trying-to-be-deeper-than-it-is plot. I found myself picking up on elements derived from 'Your Name' and 'Spirited Away' and I sort of started describing the movie as a cross between the two, but only if you take all the good stuff from those movies and throw it out the window. Go watch those instead for a more enjoyable time.
Again, if you don't care about plot, characters, animation or music and really just want to have something to shut your brain off and waste 95 minutes of your day, sure, go ahead. Won't watch it again though.

After watching the trailer, I was excited to watch this series as it reminded me a lot of Cowboy Bebop and the likes. It isn't, so I was quite disappointed. I know it is not fair to compare it to such a household name and that one should evaluate an anime on its own merits, but this is also where the main problems lie.

The story itself is quite interesting, but you get the feeling that the plot gets forgotten about on multiple occasions throughout the episodes. Especially in the middle, it got hard to keep on watching since it just felt like random occurences ... one after another without any relevance to their search of Hiroshi or them getting caught up with gangs. This would be fine if it at least helped to develop Michiko and Hatchin's relationship or their characters, but it didn't. Which leads to the next point: they are just so mean to each other for seemingly no reason. Most of the characters and their motivations just fell flat, making it extremely difficult to care for them or understand. This way, they only get increasingly annoying over time and in pivotal moments, like the ending, you just stopped caring. Not to forget, the ridiculous amount of plot armor the protagonists would get makes it so that their lives are never really in danger, therefore no real reason to root for them.
Michiko is best described in my opinion as being the representation of the crazy stalker ex-girlfriend meme, and Hatchin is just plain irritating. Honestly, the most interesting characters were oftentimes extras that were only relevant for 1 or 2 episodes.
Overall the pacing was awful, with a good beginning, a super slow middle and a 'meh' ending. It feels like the writers intended for there to be a deep meaning and for the audience to always get the secondary meaning of certain dialogues or monologues, but most of the time it just felt like nothing was said or it just became confusing.

In my opinion, it is a unique show with a setting that is seldomly explored, which deserves praise, but it is just massively underdeveloped.
Wasted potential, 3/10.

To make it really short: this movie is full of simps. 2, at least. The two male protagonists act really irrational at times, especially the main one (forgot his name, the one without glasses), and while I could forgive them if the girl of their interest was the most perfect person or extraordinarily beautiful, that was certainly not the case. Although she was constantly being described as being the most beautiful and standing out a whole bunch academically, her design was super generic and she didn't get to prove any of her supposedly qualities to the audience.
On top of it, which was actually the ... most infuriating aspect of this watch, her personality was absolute trash: selfish, harsh, mean, exploitative, manipulative, narcissistic, the list goes on. Which made it even more incomprehensible when the main character finally admitted to himself that he had actually fallen for her. I legit was sighing loudly at the screen and made a big ol' facepalm.
So no, this movie was not enjoyable to watch from a romance point of view, it was more frustrating to see everyone just do what the main girl wanted. I guess the most understandable people in the whole movie were the girl bullies/female classmates, because honestly, as bad as this sounds, they had a fair point in being angry at the main girl.

Overall, the art of course was beautiful (as expected from Studio Ghibli) and I guess the story at least had good pacing and the usual nice visuals. I do understand now though why I had never heard of this movie before.

Oh boy, here we go.

So I was going into this anime expecting something out of the ordinary and refreshingly different... While this is certainly true, it tends to be more negatively based than positively. This absurd anime may only have 6 episodes, but it did drag on terribly, every 20 minutes felt like 1 hour to me. The pacing of it was really off, at times being super quick, making it hard to follow what was actually happening, whereas other times it stalled on some moments that in the grand scheme of things didn't seem to be important after all.
The music choice did ... not help in this, the constant upbeat tune in the background was fun at first, but rendered the whole series kind of monotone since it almost always stayed the same, regardless of whether it was a supposedly heartwarming moment or an action scene.
Regarding the characters, none of them are likeable and mostly come across as annoying and selfish. I do get that these people are supposed to be flawed, but the story itself does not give us enough background to truly sympathize with them and understand them if they do a complete turnaround in their actions and words. So overall they all come across as manipulative... the only character that one could kind of sympathize with (only because I felt sorry for him as they were all mean to him) was the robot 'TV-kun'.
As for the plot... well, there was hardly any. If there was a plot, it was very thin and vague, some would describe it as abstract or kind of like a parody of certain anime tropes, but to me it just felt lacking and filled with empty promises. They would tease information but then drop it or just not elaborate on it, making it frustrating to try to follow the story.
I do have to give them credit though for the animation, which was quite good given the time period it is from. The character designs were nice as well, making it even more disappointing considering how unlikeable they were. I also have to recognize that there was a special type of humor in this series, with overly dramatic reactions, faces and poses, which I can certainly see as being funny to some people, maybe even the majority if they are not too concerned about plot and pacing.

Overall, I would not necessarily recommend this anime to anyone, except if I know exactly the type of comedy they like (it was just not for me, which is ok). I leave this review with a massive headache, and good luck to the next person to watch this broken rollercoaster of a show. Giving it 2-3/10.