I stumbled upon this in the “critically acclaimed” section of Netflix so I went in with some expectations.

Sypnosis

The movie tells the story of the growing relationship between Josse and Tsueno. Josse is a disabled girl, cooped up at home by her grandmother after an incident which almost left her badly injured. Tsueno is a university student who works as her caregiver after he saved Josse from said incident in a chance encounter.

Josse is a sterotypical tsundere, verbally abusing Tsueno immediately after he saved her and making ridiculous requests of him after he starts working as her caregiver. One day she decides to run away to go see the sea. Tsueno, who at this point is ready to quit, manages to find her and is ready to take her home until he learns of where she wanted to go. As a man driven by his love of the ocean, he decides to fulfill her wish. This results in a turning point in their relationship and she warms up to him and he brings her to experience the outside world.

Unfortunately her only guardian, her grandmother passes away. Leaving her unable to keep Tsueno in her employ. At the same time he also made strides towards his dreams and is ready to leave for Mexico to pursue them and is unable to support her even if he wanted to. Worried by her future, she gives up her only passion of painting to work in an office to support herself, driving her into depression. She takes it out on Tsueno which results in him getting in a traffic accident, potentially leaving him handicapped for life.

Tsueno’s injuries leave him unable to pursue his dream, this time sending him into depression. After learning that Tsueno gave up on his dreams which defined so many aspects of his life, this time Josse takes it upon her to support him and restore his hope. In the process, she also rekindles her passion by making a illustrated book about a mermaid and a tiger, telling the story of them and her hopes for his recovery.

In the end, he eventually recovers and is able to head to Mexico while Josse makes steps towards her own goal while supporting herself as an independent adult.

Impressions

Art

Visuals-wise the art was definitely cinematic quality with detailed character and background art. The movie had a down to earth style, depicting realistic scenes.

Story and Characters

The story is an extremely moving and inspirational one, although very cliched and full of holes. It was really touching to see Tsueno support Josse because he wanted to share his dream with her, expanding her horizons greatly. Tsueno’s potential disability was a very tense moment because it was a disability that Josse had her whole life making it difficult for him to feel bad about it but at the same time given the circumstances of the accident it’s easy to blame Josse. Josse’s storybook had quite the inspirational message that there are more than one way to achieve our goals, and one should not let their limitations stop them.

On the other hand, the plot holes detract from the experience as I found myself wondering about them instead of focusing on the story. For example, why was Josse’s grandmother so overprotective of her that she wasn’t allowed to go out and even made to repeat that people are scary? Was it related to how her parents died? Was her disability also related to how they died? She was a fully fledged adult already at this point. In addition, how was she so ignorant of the outside world despite being an adult? She was definitely brought out by her parents in the past evidenced by her father asking her about the taste of the ocean in the past. After her grandmother died, her financial situation should have improved considering her grandmother didn’t have an income, although I am quite ignorant with respect to how inheritance works. The social service workers were also very dispassionate about their job. As social service workers shouldn’t they have recognized the importance of supporting those with disabilities instead of forcing her into an office role? She appeared to be competent enough at art to make a living off it, or at least to give it a try before they forced her to give it up. The accident was very convinient but it was poetic so I decided not to think too much about it.

Josse was an emphatizable character at the start given how she was probably brought up but I think she was still too tsun and ungrateful in the middle portion.

Tsueno was very focused on his dream which I think is amazing and enviable. At the same time he was also very compassionate being able to put up with Josse. I appreciate that he was torn between his dream and supporting her, and also that he managed to make a choice at the end.

Mai was very much a side character but I appreciate that she respected Tsueno’s dream to study overseas, was willing to support him after he gave up on them but also conceded to Josse to get his motivation back.

I would however like to make one final complaint that they should have communicated more instead of Josse disspearng multiple times and Tsueno keeping quite about his plans, although I can kind of understand why he didn’t say anything if he was considering staying behind. Finally, shouldn’t he have mentioned that he was coming back for spring break? I would think its better than a surprise that might not have worked out.