It remains visually and aurally stimulating, but Makoto Shinkai’s new work doesn’t really fly off the ground, and ultimately succumbs to perfunctory storytelling and a so-so emotional payoff.

It remains visually and aurally stimulating, but Makoto Shinkai’s new work doesn’t really fly off the ground, and ultimately succumbs to perfunctory storytelling and a so-so emotional payoff.
Shinkai’s breathtaking romance anime is imbued with a modern sensibility as it takes on conceptual themes of time travel, apocalyptic disaster and body swapping with effortless aplomb.
In his beautiful if sometimes convoluted first feature, Makoto Shinkai shows the early rumblings of an artist who would become a first-rate anime director.