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About 95% of this is a recap of the events of the TV series, with the remaining being a few minutes resolving the ambiguous ending of the TV series. I think it is safe to say that these few minutes are all that is worth seeing in this.
There are some new scenes to suggest that someone is independently investigating everything that happened, but this plot point doesn't serve much narrative purpose and thus most people coming from the TV series can probably safely ignore the recap and skip to the end of the film. If anything, these additional scenes just add noise, and even for ... people that have not seen the TV series considering this as a shorter option, I don't think I could recommend this film over the original.
All in all, there's something here for those who want to see a more concrete ending to the TV series, but otherwise I would not recommend watching this film (and I would not recommend watching the recap portion)

I feel that Shokugeki no Souma could have been so much more.

I do feel like the art was always extremely strong, and only got better, and I do respect Saeki Shun as a result of that, and I don't mean to bash his partner writer in any way, but I do feel like the story was suffering the problem of getting too samey, with the same story structure being used over and over with only just enough difference to keep dedicated readers from dropping it.

I think that there's a possibility that the very concept and structure of the shokugeki is the main problem here. ... The shokugeki replaces the battle in a traditional shonen battle manga, but it has certain rules and a structure (also owing to the fact that they're cooking, and the cooking itself is all real world techniques) that make it not just unclear who is winning at any one point (meaning there's no ebb and flow to the "battle"), but also make it so that it's 90% certain who is going to win as soon as they finish cooking and decide who is going to get their food judged first. It used to be of the opinion that the best current shonen battle manga was Shokugeki, but it's pretty clear at this point that the shokugeki lacks a lot of the features that a real fight has.

It's also just overusage of the tournament arc. Normally, an infrequent tournament arc is a good way to instantly generate hype but when every single arc ends in a tournament and a final showdown, and every battle inside said tournament is a shokugeki, that's a lot of extra rigidity that makes the story feel repetitive.

Despite all that, I think that it was good for a very long time, actually, but it did feel like all the structural problems were wearing it down by the last arc. You shouldn't be reading Shokugeki no Souma, and be thinking to yourself, "oh, not another shokugeki"

I really wish that I could review individual episodes of this separately. Because this 24 episodes contained simultaneously one of the most "meh" stories that Kawahara has ever written, filled with some of the most dubious writing choices that I have ever seen a writer make.

The PVs of SAO II promised us a new game. GGO. We'll get to see a world of guns, and people shooting each other. There was probably a minority of the audience going in thinking they would get to see lots of military otaku knowledge, and, well, gun porn. And what does Kawahara do with Kirito?

Anyway, I'd rather not talk ... much about GGO. It made up the bulk of this 24-episode hark, and if it had ended with the GGO arc, I would probably be giving this anime a 3 or a 4 out of 10.

However, here is where I recommend that if anyone is interested at all in the premise of SAO, but dropped it at some point for whatever reason, they skip to episode 18 of this anime. Somehow, SAO has finally done it. SAO has made a genuinely good story.

Watching the Mother's Rosario arc of SAO left me genuinely surprised. Likeable characters all round? Actual tension? A story which made me experience emotion? It's as though this isn't even SAO anymore! Maybe Kawahara writes good stories in his spare time, in between writing wish fulfilment power fantasies that pander to a certain niche? Actually, I had to look up whether Kawahara actually wrote this thing while I was writing this review.

If I was able to write a separate review just for Mother's Rosario, I would have given this an overall score of 8/10 or so. I would genuinely recommend this to anybody who was taken by the premise of SAO, and also any fans of the VRMMO genre as a whole.

Romance stories usually deal with the love between two people. Even when more than two people are involved in love triangles and such, most of the time the story is about which pairing will end up being the pairing. Aside from this kind of love, however, we sometimes lose sight of the other people who love us in life. Family, friends. Of course, when we get into this area, we have crossed genres entirely.

Tsukigakirei is about the love between two people. And in a sense, these two people will be the main focus of the story throughout. However, the usual way this focus is applied ... in many romance anime, nowadays, seems to be to focus just on these people who are involved in the actual romance, and maybe one or two support characters who only get to be there because they will have a direct effect on the romance. Any tension or drama that is generated will arise from misunderstandings (which over repeated usage at best make the characters seem a bunch of idiots, and at worst leads the audience to start questioning the skills of the writer), love rivalry, or just poor luck or bad situations.

There is more to our lives than our boy/girlfriends, however. Even as a middle school student, you have a social circle, your own hobbies, ambitions, obligations (and as a side note, activities could fit into several of these categories), and of course, your family, who try to keep your best interests at heart, but that sometimes means they push you into making a particular choice, and sometimes means they will disagree with your (in hindsight, perhaps a bad) decision. Maybe this kind of drama is not as exciting, but in Tsukigakirei, it resonates.

While watching this, I enjoyed watching two people play the game of romance. It is for this purpose that we enjoy romance stories, after all. But equally, I enjoyed watching two people try to get through middle school life, with all its various obligations, at the same time. I will note that I say "people" here, not "characters", because at some point, I became heavily invested in these two, for a variety of reasons, though I believe the largest of which is that I got to see their circle of friends, and their supporting families. These are the people who we also love, though perhaps in a different way, and I could see that they were as important to each other as the people I care about in my own life.

One final thing. Tsukigakirei has, as far as I can recall, no internal monologue. We never know what any of the people are thinking other than what we see displayed on their faces, or what they say out loud. Because complex misunderstandings leading to fights between couples is not what this story is about. And because the writer and the animators are skilled enough that they can show us information about what these people are going through, without having the character explicitly spell it out for us.

The moon is beautiful, isn't it?

There are not many criticisms that can be made about this. The main criticism might come from someone expecting a sports anime. Yet, I was expecting a sports anime, and could not have been happier with what I received instead. This is not a pure sports anime in the same sense as Ace of the Diamond, for example. That is fine, however, because anything that can be so easily placed in a shallow category such as "Sport" is going to itself be shallow.

Cross Game is more of a trip of emotions. This is about a few core characters, about their relationships with each other, ... with their families, with their teammates. And it is quite the journey. We have plenty of time to see our characters grow, to see their low moments, and to see their highs. Many of the most emotional moments take place both on and away from the grounds.

It is definitely about baseball. However, in the end, it is also a story about a bunch of high-schoolers growing up. And while high school is overused as a setting in anime, it is helped by the fact that most of the important moments take place either some kind of baseball grounds, or away from the school.

There is little more to say without leaving major spoilers. However, I would urge anyone who has some interest in baseball to watch at least a few episodes, and see if they like it. This is one of the best stories I have had the pleasure to experience, period.