I'm Australian, and my Year 9 Japanese class watched this in Japanese with English subtitles for an end-of-year treat. Being 15ish ourselves, I think we were supposed to identify with the main character, which, to be fair, I did to some extent. The majority of the film was pretty predictable, but enjoyable and pleasant to watch nonetheless. Although my viewing was somewhat broken, only being able to watch 30 minutes worth at a time thanks to class timetables, the storyline was still easy enough to follow, even in a language I don't really know all that well, and the writing and character development was good.
So, overall, I was pretty pleased with the movie... until the last minute of script. If you're yet to watch it, take my advice and stop just a minute before the credits. And I'm warning you now, I'm just about to write the ending.
The only thing that marred the whole ending for me was the proposal and acceptance. It was all happy, calm viewing, until Seiji asked Shizuku to marry him. There was a kind of, 'um... what the!?' pause in my classroom for a second, before we all burst out with derisive comments. A girl and a boy, our age, agreeing to marry each other? No matter what circumstances may have occurred during the rest of the movie, that was the single jarring end note in the symphony. There wasn't enough build up to that moment, and no 15 year olds would do that. It was terrible in the fact that it was so unrealistic, and so Hollywood.
So, the general class consensus from a group of 15 year old girls was, 'it was a fairly good movie, right up until the ending.'
So, overall, I was pretty pleased with the movie... until the last minute of script. If you're yet to watch it, take my advice and stop just a minute before the credits. And I'm warning you now, I'm just about to write the ending.
The only thing that marred the whole ending for me was the proposal and acceptance. It was all happy, calm viewing, until Seiji asked Shizuku to marry him. There was a kind of, 'um... what the!?' pause in my classroom for a second, before we all burst out with derisive comments. A girl and a boy, our age, agreeing to marry each other? No matter what circumstances may have occurred during the rest of the movie, that was the single jarring end note in the symphony. There wasn't enough build up to that moment, and no 15 year olds would do that. It was terrible in the fact that it was so unrealistic, and so Hollywood.
So, the general class consensus from a group of 15 year old girls was, 'it was a fairly good movie, right up until the ending.'