Film Reviews by JC

Yet another enjoyable magical realist anime, this time dealing with themes of bereavement and mental health. Despite veering dangerously close to becoming overly saccharine in places and pushing the "ganbaru" aspect of Japanese society a bit far, I did enjoy the film. I hated the subtitles though - small white subtitles on brightly coloured images really don't work - hence only two stars overall. I'm not a fan of watching foreign language films dubbed into English, but I really hate the whiny nasal American dubs most anime receive. I wish more effort would be put into creating legible subtitles so more people can enjoy films in their original language!

I was looking forward to watching this film with its surrealist take on a number of frankly surreal real-life aspects of Japanese society, but the small white subtitles on top of the film's psychadelic colour scheme was a literal headache and we had to give up after 5 minutes!