I feel that anime or live action, these last days of Fantasia I’ve been looking for the same thing: a satisfying finale. Perhaps it’s sort of personal peeve of mine, but I think that’s the only way a good movie becomes great. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessary want a happy ending or a bloody climax. I’m just hoping for an ending that fits the movie. It can even be ambiguous or inconclusive as long as it fits the story.

fireworks

Fireworks is an animation film where the characters don’t necessarily deserve all together happy ending. I’m not trying to be mean (usually), but directors Akiyuki Shinbo, Nobuyuki Takeuchi and writer Hitoshi Ohne have crafted two characters that I found myself on the fence whether they’re adorable or just plain conceited.

Classmates Norimichi and Nazuna have rarely exchanged a word with each other. When Norimichi’s best friend Yusuke confesses that he’s got a thing for the lovely but distant Nazuna, we’re supposed to side with Norimichi because he has a thing for her too. Kind of. Or perhaps Yusuke is just playing around. Props to the movie on that getting the teenage flimsiness right, these youngsters are not sure what they want.

Nazuna however has found something on the water, some sort of glass ball trinket whatchamacallit. When things end up going sour and Nazuna is caught by her mom trying to run away, Nazuna throws the trinket which catches the light of the sun and then… Well, magic happens. It turns out that the trinket reverses time, but when it does it steps back in time but into a slightly different timeline where something has been changed. The resulting story is actually disappointing.

Not recommended. I feel it will frustrate fans of the genre and the end is a complete letdown. The whimsical and the strange in this story fall behind to the love between our teenage couple. The film fails to bring it in both counts. My main problem is that I don’t believe these two are really in love and the quirkiness of it all fails to live up to its promise. It’s more like they’re in love with the idea of being in love and they’ve happened to run into each other. If we had establish some sort of connection early on, this love story would have a better foundation.

That will do for now.