It's subject matter isn't the usual fare of a prestige film yet but I'm not entirely sure it needs to be and I'm curious to see where they go with this whole psychic conspiracy thing as well as the cell phone thing. Based on the discussions the characters have been having about the matter and the overall look and direction of the film I think the whole purpose is to try to get people to look within and to the natural world for the answers they seek regarding complex questions like love and relationships rather than the artificial one governed by gadgets and non-face to face encounters. Of course the whole psychic mind reading thing throws a complication into this cause there's really nothing natural about what Kyogoku is doing and his charisma could be real and natural or totally a source of his apparent mind reading powers (something I swear the teacher got to him over judging by his reaction to the whole "acting in the present" line of dialogue) when he talks with people with added insight into every situation like he was doing at school or when he rescued the suicidal girl. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that was the victim of the cell phone incident everyone was talking about.
Instead so far I kind of see Natsuki as the most honest person in the film with Kahori coming off as your usual polite always trying to save face for herself and others shy reserved type and Seki as just kind of a horny dunce with lots to learn about relating to other people straight up. There's two ways to look at her constantly beating up on Seki, one is to see it as the usual cliche of girl beating up on another guy she likes ala tsundere tropes, another is to see it as outright frustration with and brutal honesty about how she feels with the guy clearly not noticing her interest in him yet pursuing this other girl he doesn't even have the guts to properly approach. It's about the most direct way of saying pay attention to the things I'm trying to convey to you yet the guy seems totally clueless. He didn't even want to meet her face to face after their whole fight, instead opting for the cell phone method which she was clearly ignoring.The whole holding a mirror up to the natural world line spoken by the teacher from A Midsummer Night's Dream hints to the apparent theme of the film more than anything though.
The film is of course absolutely astonishingly gorgeous with it's watercolor look and animation flares (We don't get that sort of thing enough anymore), to complain about the level of detail and animation quality under any circumstances I think is a tremendous injustice to the efforts of the animation staff at Sunrise. The complaints about the Sakura petals at the start I particularly don't get, if people genuinely find that distracting and unwelcome than I'm not even sure what to say.
This is some well above average stuff even if it does make some gratuitous use of lens flare.
The score stands out to me too as pretty exceptional bringing back memories of Sunrise last big movie animation effort in Colorful with it's heavy use of piano and orchestral cues to set the mood early on though again the subject matter seems less heavy in it's focus compared to that one though still more so than I think it's being given credit for. It doesn't look like a characters study (aside from maybe Kyogoku) so much as a study in ideas and concepts about the nature of the world we live in, which I almost always find interesting. These types of things tend to raise more questions than give answers though so I'm anticipating that as well.
I'll write more in detail later as this impression can all change once I finish the film and upon subsequent viewings, but so far this is pretty special. Though I can't help but figure that it's probably going to be one of those movies that requires multiple watches to pick up on all the little details so the fact that it's really pretty helps a lot in that regard.