A review of Fragtime spoilers 500https://i.ur.com/uAaXcqp.jpg The feature film ova? Fragtime adapted from Satos yuri manga is memorable for its ambitious thematic thrust yet falls short of truly achieving a perfect executionits notably liberal in its use of narrative shortcuts resulting in a stunted dry story. Its strength is in its premise and ideas and occasionally in strong moments but the rest of its runtime is padded with somewhat boring craft and exposition. And its plenty heavy on expositionmany of the key moments are essentially explained through voiceover. The thematic thrust I described earlier is quite possibly the most powerful facet of the Fragtime experience so Ill cover that first. Fragtime is a romance the tensions struggles are created through the interplay between our two mains. These two mains are: Misuzu Moritani our protagonist a girl mostly characterized for her loneliness her seclusion from the rest of high school societyshe practically lives in her own world haha Our deuteragonist Haruka Murakami the love interest is a girl notable for how social and altruistic she isshe tries to be friends with and tries to please everyone around her to a selfdestructive extentusing a false performative faade and ignoring her true self. The growth and progression of the characters are as follows: Moritani has to become more social break her selfcontained bubble and become attuned to the needs of others while Murakamis growth is opposite of thisshe has to stop being so destructively altruistic and become a bit selfish with her own personal needs. These internal struggles are symbolized through the timestopMoritani uses the timestop as an escape from difficult situations and escape from having to deal with others its symbolic of her seclusion to Murakami its an escape from having to maintain her faade she can just be herself. This escapism cant last forever though so they have to come to terms with their issuesthe conclusion being that the timestop ability has disappeared and both girls learn to grow. 500https://i.ur.com/bHR6vMG.jpg Fragtimes theming is quite excellent in two ways. The first being that the film is quite articulate in this theming it understands it and expresses it with a sophistication that is quite compelling and well above average. The second is Murakami her selfdestructive behavior and faade while slightly tropey hit hard with mewhile I dont think I act in this way I have friends that do to a great detriment to their mental health. Its quite a unique perspective and it works somewhat well. I also have issues with the storytelling though. Mostly its just like lazy yknow. Quite possibly the most prominent criticism for Fragtime is its subpar characters and Im inclined to agreethe characters are mostly flat and underdeveloped. These characters are very nondistinct and most aspects of their character are derived from common tropesoutside of the simple of character outlines there arent many interesting unique or even endearing character traits. I praised the theming for being articulate but its not flawless its very blunt and lacks nuance or subtlety. Ive been lenient on it but some might find it too generic as many aspects of the theme are done better in other placesan example would be Yagate Kimi ni Narus Toukothough one could argue Toukos arc is about a different form of performativity but I digress. The script is also not particularly tight in generalit covers the ground it needs to but it overuses devices such as exposition and its not particularly engaging. The storytelling itself is feels clunky unwieldy and due to the looseness of the script it doesnt flow well. I feel a similar way about the script and the artwork its memorable but not exceptional. Fragtimes character designs are of a style that I quite like very low contrast and no shadows but sharp lineworkyet Fragtime doesnt do this particularly well the designs are sharp expressive and attractive but not really dynamic or animated in like the way that for example Sadamoto Yoshiyukis designs in Mamoru Hosoda films are. The backgrounds are fine theyre forgettable. The overall presentation is similarly just fine. The film doesnt really show a particular talent for the edit composition or anything really. 300https://i.ur.com/1sJskRH.jpg 300https://i.ur.com/jp04s7g.jpg sharp low contrast pretty designs 300https://i.ur.com/Ctzttag.jpg 300https://i.ur.com/chumdkv.jpg background art Fragtime has some good qualities yet it isnt a flawless experience. I enjoyed my time with this film yet there were plenty of moments where it broke my suspension of disbelief. I liked it very gay movie.