Okay, why did this get a movie? I mean, I know the T.V. series ended badly and I probably wouldn't mind a little bit more or even a better ending to get a better conclusion, but was this really necessary? I don't think a way to conclude a series is by making a movie out of it when movies require conflict and this is exactly what this movie had. It was a sucky way to conclude a good-but-not-great series.
So, the movie starts off with Saki, in a taxi in New York. But that dang rude Taxi man goes off on her for some reason, drops her off somewhere suddenly, and leaves her there, leaving her phone and passport in the car. Then, everyone starts staring at her and humiliates her. When she finds her family and friends, she starts hugging one of them and crying. Wow that took a little bit of time to get to a conflict of this movie already, huh?! 😲
Here are my problems with this movie, the characters. This movie focuses more on Saki when I thought the main protagonist of the series was Akira. I know Saki was one of the protagonists, but she wasn't quote as much in the series as Akira was unquote. But I don't like how this movie focused on Saki more when Saki isn't even that great of a character in the first place.
Of all the characters they had to choose, they chose Saki. First of all, she likes to whine and mope about things; second of all, she can get a bit mean on occasion. I didn't think making her the main protagonist would be a good idea. I liked her better as being just a love interest for Akira. Akira used to have a story just for him in the series, but now he's become Saki's sidekick, which makes Saki the second main protagonist.
As for Akira... why did he erase his memories? Why did Juiz change his name to linuma? why and how did he disappear? Is it just because he went off to New York on purpose? Did this movie answer all these questions?
The characters are inconsistent to the ones in the series in terms of what role they play and their personalities and are now shadows of their former selves. I noticed that the few producers who did the T.V. series have not done this movie, and it probably would've been better if they came back to do this film. Even the voice actors sounded like they were struggling to make their voices fit their now inconsistent characters.
Next is the story, the movie does not have much of a plot; the only plot it has is Saki trying to find Akira, which lasts all of like 20 minutes. The dialogue is clichéd and there's no point to this movie other than it's about Saki trying to find Akira and get her passport and phone back. The movie starts putting me to sleep with its uninteresting story and focusing on the painfully annoying Saki instead of Akira, who was supposed to be the main protagonist in the first place, and since he disappeared, the movie had to ignore him for a long while.
It was a struggle to watch this dull film. It was too slow, the pacing was kind of all over the place, and there is not enough action in it and what I mean by that is that the way the movie is that the structure in this movie is missing some of the important ingredients every movie/TV show needs just to be some kind of silly slice-of-life drama and it would've been better off as a manga, as long as it doesn't mess up on the things this movie has messed up on. I also hate slice-of- life because most of them don't structure the ingredients every movie/TV show needs. They can be slow and just would rather focus on the drama and the characters and not bothering to put any important elements in them.
And no, don't give me that excuse of "It's a slice-of-life, you're not supposed to worry about plot, and it's supposed to be relaxing, happy and carefree." No. You can make a good slice-of-life while making it flow well.
So, let's get to the good points to this movie. There are several funny scenes in it, I liked the merry-go-round part and music, it was nice to see Akira and Saki happy and calm and talking about catching a gold ring on a merry-go-round, I empathized with them there. But that's about it. The characters' personalities as a whole were not funny and neither was the conflict in this movie or whatever things they probably played for comedy.
This is the kind of film that is forgettable and I would probably pretend it's never happened. Though, I would like to try and grab a gold ring while on a merry-go-round.
