I’ve found it strange how I ended up loving this film so much — my most favorite anime film ever despite how small the story is, how quiet the whole affair is.

It’s certainly divergent from my core tastes, but I suppose it reminds me of my freshman year in high school: not in the sense of having similar circumstances with the characters. Rather, in how I read similar, first love kind of stories at that age (With Patches of Many Hues, by Estrella Alfon in particular) and fell in love in turn.

In a broader sense, this film prepared me to appreciate K-ON!! in how feeling is communicated in a collection of small things: How the slightest of bows can communicate a moment when one realizes the love of his life. How a club adviser/homeroom teacher’s refusal to enter the music room while her charges played for each other is one of the strongest portrayals of friendship one can see in anime and beyond.