Nerawareta Gakuen

Yes, this film was so visually gorgeous that we're bringing you about 75 screencaps.

There were a few things going through my mind when I belatedly got to finally finishing this film. Firstly, I couldn't help but feel excited to see Yuutaro Honjou, one of my favorite young seiyuu, cast as one of the leads. Honjou is a great actor, working in the voice acting industry since he was fairly young, but only arriving on the scene with a (slightly) post-pubescent voice last year in his role as Ao in Eureka Seven Astral Ocean. Whatever your personal opinion on that work is, it's hard to deny that Honjou did a wonderful job there, and it makes me glad to see him star in another leading role, as Kenji Seki this time, in Psychic School Wars. Another thought that came through to me was just how Sunrise this whole production was, regardless of if you consider that a positive or negative thing. That's not to say the film wasn't gorgeous (though Zephyr-senpai has a point in referring to it as "Lens Flare the Movie"), or that it was somehow hurt by its inherent Sunrise-ness, but it does leave a very specific impression, at least to me.

Particularly, I felt that the narrative was more or less all over the place. There is a plot, yes, which involves the theme of communication (Are cellphones positive or negative to communication? Are there better ways to talk to one another? Should knowing everything about someone without choice be a better alternative than choosing to speak to others?), but nothing ever really seems to happen in a dynamic sense. There are a lot of conversations, a lot of wistful thinking and wondering and memories, but not a whole lot of action or any solid goal as far as you'd expect from a film about psychics. There's nothing wrong with that of course, but the revelations that were made, particularly towards the end, all left me feeling like I was missing a few details here and there. It left me with a very specific feeling, one of expectation, and I'm not really sure I was satisfied with that in the end.

On a second note, you could easily tell this was a Sunrise film from the characters, their interactions, and their actions. It seemed that the more poignant moments in the story couldn't be held without the atmosphere being broken by a silly or immature remark here and there, or Natsuki doing impossible cartwheels and backflips, or calling Kenji out as a pervert, so on and so forth. I get that that's just what anime stereotypes tend to be, and you get used to that sort of dialogue, but it could sometimes feel oddly out of place, had it not been so inherently Sunrise at least. What I mean by that is that the studio is just rather good at doing whatever it wants apologetically (noted recent example, Valvrave the Liberator) and getting away with it. I don't really mind, but it can in some occasions cheapen a narrative or feel forced regardless. Overall though, it was a nice film, if a little wordy and somewhat overly dramatic. The visuals, however, definitely made the experience worth it. We're sorry you have to scroll through 75 screencaps.

N.B.: Many thanks to Ivan for the caps; he watched the film some time ago but I unfortunately took so long to get back to it that I think he thought his work went to waste. It did not!