Rochelle D

I am not very fond of this movie, to be honest. It has good visuals, interesting side characters, wonderful animation, and an interesting plot idea. The plot does have it's moments where it is so slow that it loses my attention (if you do not mind slow moments then disregard this point), but what bothers me is how the main character acted with all the surrounding characters. We're shown in the beginning that the main character's parents are divorced (or getting a divorce). She was very clearly angry with this and felt everyone was selfish. She didn't like her father's girlfriend either and I tried very hard to see why, but I couldn't see why she kept up her hatred. The father's girlfriend was kind and warm towards her. At first, I thought this movie was going to focus on the main character and the father's girlfriend bonding but it barely shows anything of the sort. Instead, we're given her hyperfixation on her crush. The main character and her crush started off as cute but as the movie goes on, I recognized more and more red flags with her infatuation of him. She smothers him and, honestly, even becomes stalker-like. The relationship between the two didn't feel natural and even was harmful. I was honestly surprised that her crush returned her feelings near the end. It didn't make sense. I don't think this is a good message towards younger viewers. The whole movie revolves around them rather than her and the others in her life. She didn't try to interact with them really or address the problems with her relationships. This does bother me a lot since it painted the main character, herself, as the selfish one who didn't have empathy for anyone except her crush. I think the problem with this movie is that it did have an important lesson that it wanted to teach. This was lost when it tried too hard on it's visuals and it's "sentimental" moments. It left a lot of problems and tensions open-ended as well. If anything, it felt like it was trying too hard to copy more popular animated films. If you want to give this movie a try, then be my guest. I just wouldn't recommend it to anyone.