The non-art merits of this film are deservedly recognised and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable watch in that sense. Ultimately, for me at least, it will always be unadulterated eye-porn because Sadamoto’s work is so well used/animated/thrillingly stuffed down our pants. I’m a shallow horrible person, yes, but yknow. Sadamoto. :/

@Orion: guilty as charged yer honour. I really loved the relaxed and confident way in which the whole thing flowed, mind - the director comes across as self-assured and knows what he’s doing so I’d wager he’s on course for more good things.

As for the downtime, my apologies. There were problems during the time I was posting my last ef review, which involved re-writing the second half. There doesn’t seem to be any problem now though - I’m quite fortunate in how rarely the server goes down. Cheers for your patience!

You should be shot for that.

That aside, great review. Good point that one of the strengths of Makoto as a main character is that she’s perfectly ordinary - no grand ambitions or schemes to play the stock market and get rich, just small dreams and simple priorities. Although admittedly, who wouldn’t want to go back in time to eat more pudding, really?

I also fully agree about the dialogue - it feels perfectly natural and ordinary, thus reinforcing the setting of complete day to day normalcy. It makes a great contrast to all the sci-fi elements and serves to anchor the film in something familiar to counter the trippy time warping.

Edit: Also, I tried to post this yesterday just as your site went down. I had to keep the window open with the error page displayed all night long, waiting for your site to come back up so that I could hit refresh and not have to try and retype everything I said. ;P

Yay pudding.