Uchiage Hanabi, Shita kara Miru ka? Yoko kara Miru ka? Roughly translated means: Skyrockets, Should we see it from the side, or the bottom? Uchiage is a movie produced by SHAFT, and directed by Akiyuki Shinbo. If you’ve seen some anime, then you know what you’re in for: Head tilts, right? There are some head tilts, and that trademark Shinbo style.
In fact, a great deal of this movie is very pretty. Fireworks look lovely, background art is magnificent, and the character art is trademark SHAFT. There were a few times where I felt I was looking at other popular *monogatari shows that SHAFT is famous for, but it gets a pass even if this wasn’t part of that series. However, as much of this trademark flourish is completely and utterly wasted on the script, character development and interactions, and convoluted time travel garbage that makes up the rest of this movie.
The plot revolves around a heroine named Nazuna and two boys who are in love with her but struggling to confess, because we can be that lazy. Nazuna lays by the pool in melancholy mystery while Norimichi and Yuusuke chat for a while. A short interaction between Norimichi and Nazuna is touching, but ultimately thrown away when Nazuna suddenly wants to have an impromptu 50m swimming race with the two boys. Winner gets to do whatever Nazuna wants (wink, wink). They race, Norimichi loses, and Nazuna asks Yuusuke to go to the festival. Tropes aside, this would at least be passable if there was any other development of the characters. At this point, we’re 20 minutes into the movie and you have no idea what these people even care about.
Yuusuke is ecstatic because he has an opportunity to confess now, and Norimichi is just nonplussed about the whole thing. Instead of focusing on the triangle the movie introduces more people we don’t need to know, friends of the two boys. What transpires in this scene is a conversation about whether or not fireworks explode in a sphere or flatly. Pyrotechnic knowledge aside, all I wanted these five boys to just pay attention in physics class. It felt like I was watching a flat Earth convention where people were trying to justify the concept. The writers finally give us mercy when they decide to meet at the old lighthouse to verify the truth.
There’s not much more to know about this without spoiling the rest of the movie. In a nutshell, they go to the lighthouse, Norimichi and Yuusuke get into a fistfight for some reason, we see a lot of cool shots of windmills and lighthouses. We then, with the help of Norimichi triggering it, time travel back to the swim meet, where Norimichi wins this time, and gets the date with Nazuna. We also learn that Nazuna is trying to run away from home. Norimichi becomes her accomplice, fails to protect her, and Norimichi triggers the time travel again, and then again.
There’s a romance plot in here somewhere, but it’s completely lost in the time travel and useless conflict between the boys and Nazuna’s family. Annoyingly, we are subjected to the utterly stupid conversation about fireworks at least twice more. In one scene, Nazuna goes full musical and starts singing on the empty train with Norimichi, complete with a diversion to what I’ll call trippy Disney World. We end with another sli through time and ending inside the lenses of the lighthouse, which honestly was pretty and visually interesting.
This movie has a lot of great visuals, but near zero character development, confusing plot development, and terrible dialogue. Even with my shit taste, I hated this so much that it took me three sittings to actually complete the movie. My copy of this had an animated music video set to the final theme. If you can find this, watch it instead of the movie. You’ll get the effect of the pretty visuals without the need to sit through eighty-seven more minutes of the rest of the film.
Recommend: No, run away, far away.