The beauty of the film is that it’s not just some sappy feel-good film: it acknowledges life’s underbelly and portrays it realistically, while still working within reason and coming off as very optimistic. The positive portrayal of Hana was very refreshing, given the general invisibility of trans characters in mass media; the somewhat obvious lack of nuance irked me just a little and her Backstory involved an annoying case of catching the Idiot Ball, but was still nice to see. All in all, the film worked wonderfully for me, and I felt really giddy at the end.
Probably the sweetest film I’ve seen.
The beauty of the film is that it’s not just some sappy feel-good film: it acknowledges life’s underbelly and portrays it realistically, while still working within reason and coming off as very optimistic. The positive portrayal of Hana was very refreshing, given the general invisibility of trans characters in mass media; the somewhat obvious lack of nuance irked me just a little and her Backstory involved an annoying case of catching the Idiot Ball, but was still nice to see. All in all, the film worked wonderfully for me, and I felt really giddy at the end.
I highly recommend watching it after watching Perfect Blue, the scariest film I’ve seen
, to be completely blown away by the breadth of Satoshi Kon’s brilliance.