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Fireworks
A Misfire
Movie in a Sentence
Natsuki, a young girl upset that her mother’s remarriage will force her to move away from her hometown, recruits the help of classmate Norimichi and a magical orb to escape her parents.
What I liked
In my spoiler-free review I mentioned that there were moments of beauty in this movie animation-wise and that is definitely true. There is a crazy amount of detail to be found in Norimichi’s house alone, as well as a few background shots, that I actually paused the film in order to just take everything in. One thing I didn’t mention in my prior review, though, is the music. Daoko and Kenshi Yonezu’s “Uchiage Hanabe” is an excellent theme song for the movie and a few backing tracks/filler songs really stand out.
What I Didn’t Like
Again, my spoiler-free review pretty much outlined everything I didn’t like about this movie and I’ll repeat those sentiments here with detail. First of all, the story and pacing feel like they are trying too hard to be both artsy and thematically deep. By reusing a bunch of scenes, especially in the school and amongst the supporting cast as they go on their journey to see fireworks, the whole “resetting time” aspect of the movie bored me very quickly. Perhaps this was because characters felt flat or flip-floppy (one side character’s whole purpose is to like Natsuki, then not, then like her again with no development or real change between different realities) or maybe it was because the resets themselves showed too much of the repeat scenes before anything new, but the whole draw of the movie just didn’t land with me. Secondly, the animation as I mentioned in my earlier article felt lazy. Scenes of characters gliding down bikes to go to school were rendered in honestly bad CG that was made worse by actually good background art, that whole musical piece looked terrible in CG and was made worse by the fact that it accompanied an enjoyable song, and the application of one-off filters over older animation felt awkwardly out of place (especially during the scene where Netsuke and Norimichi first boarded the train). Thirdly, this movie’s opening scenes makes it pretty obvious that it was trying to be like Your Name and that didn’t do it any favors. From Norimichi waking up, to going downstairs to eat with setup information being talked about from the TV, to the teacher talking about the fireworks festival (that we never actually really see), the framing and shot compositions felt like a knock-off. On the slim chance that you haven’t seen Your Name (which, watch it if you haven’t), this won’t be a big deal but just know that it’s there. Finally, there’s the theme. Oh, the theme. I’m sure that there is something deeper here about really working hard for your ideal future or that each decision can you put on a different path or something else entirely I haven’t listed BUT all themes that could be presented stem from a common element: The main characters are working so hard to run away from an issue. Although Natsuki pegs her rebellion as being a result of her inherited “bad girl” tendencies, the fact of the matter is that a real life event upset her and rather than confronting it head on she chose to run away and brought others into her plan to do so. Making everything worse is the movie’s ambiguous ending (Did Norimichi reset the world enough to make it so that he and Natsuki escaped to Tokyo? Did he return it to normal but flee with her otherwise?) but honestly I couldn’t care less about what happened.
Overall Feelings
My entire watching experience of this movie consisted of me trying to justify having started it but in the end I wasn’t able to and am not able to. With a predictable and muddy plot, uneven animation stemming from awkward mixes of CG and 2D work, flat characters, a face-value theme that didn’t resonate with me, and a knock-off feel at times, this movie was everything an anime movie shouldn’t be or shouldn’t have been in 2017. It had a wealth of movies before it that did so much more, and a wealth of movies after it that excelled as well, but by trying to be maybe too insightful and too artsy without a script or production quality to match Fireworks just came across as subpar. The whole movie, characters asked themselves if fireworks are round or flat: Let me tell you, the movie Fireworks is definitely flat. Most of the time it’s better to try to be yourself than to piggy-back off of the success of others.