Brief Story Line
After a strange phenomenon occurred where bubbles falling all over the world, a large explosion destroyed Tokyo and the city was somehow covered by a large bubble with a dangerous vortex inside. As more and more people leaving Tokyo, some younger generation decided to live in it and have parkour tournament for recreation purpose. One of the best was Hibiki (Jun Shison - High&Low The Worst etc) who was part of the Blue Blaze team. They were living in an abandoned ship together with a scientist named Makoto (Alice Hirose - Hyouka: Forbidden Secrets etc) and a veteran parkour athlete, Shin (Mamoru Miyano - Death Note etc)
One day Hibiki heard a song coming from the Tokyo tower and decided to have a look and was saved by a mysterious young girl. Unable to speak at first, Hibiki later on named her Uta (singer Riria). As they grew closer, the mysterious nature of Uta bothered another member of Blue Blaze team, Kai (Yuki Kaji - Attack on Titan etc).
So what would happen to Hibiki and Uta, and did Uta has anything to do with the bubbles? Find them all in this quite romantic animation movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I already knew from the trailer that there would be a bit of intensity from the parkour actions and romance in this movie. As the film progressed, there was nothing surprising from the story and it went on without anything really extraordinary, except for some suspenseful moments related to the parkour tournament. The romance shown here was sweet as it involved two young people in their first ever love. However, somehow there was a feeling that it would have an inevitable ending (which turned out to be right).
The animation of this film was quite beautiful especially the setting of the Tokyo's situation after the bubble incident. Like any other anime, the actions were very swift but sometimes a bit too fast making it seemed a bit unrealistic, although it could be explained that it was due to the city's condition which defy gravity. But still the suspense was pretty strong because of the well placed background music, even if sometimes a bit too loud. Btw, if you have seen lots of anime movies/series, this one is not the type where it has lots of extreme facial expressions and in fact felt quite serious. I thought there was only 1 scene that made me laughed, involving Kai and Makato.
The revealing of the bubbles were done quite nicely to my opinion. It also has a pretty awesome climax scene with a good enough conclusion and an ending that truly satisfy me. I might not have liked it if the movie had a standard ending, especially since the story was not ordinary at all. It has a duration of 100 minutes which was OK. It has no mid or post end credit scene but you could see some lovely animations during closing credit accompanied by a nice song titled "See You, Catch You Later" sung by Riria herself.
This movie was directed by TetsurÅ Araki who had directed episodes of Attack on Titan & Death Note anime series and had won an award as well. Unlike anime movies that were based on popular manga series, this one was actually written by Gen Urobuchi (writer of visual novels Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero etc) together with Naoko Sato & Renji Oki and a manga series was written at a later stage based on this film.
Overall to me this was an OK and pretty entertaining sweet romance movie with a bit of action and fantasy. However personally it lacked a really amazing topic or strong relationship. Even though some of the actions were pretty intense but they were not absolutely great. And the love relationship was sweet and lovely but not totally beautiful that would melt your heart. But then again, that was my personal experience and view. Other people might feel this to be truly amazing. So if you are fans of sweet young love romantic anime movie, you can give this a try.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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