I'm sorry to say this, but this movie was outright boring. It literally had only 1 moment, when at least some tension was present. That in itself is not necessarily bad, but there was also a lot of completely unrelated stuff. The main goal here is to show how Kaeda is growing and fighting her Adolescence Syndrome, but half of the running time is not even about her. I am not saying Sakuta or Mai or some other characters should not have appeared at all, but it's just most of the dialogues and interactions had little to no purpose. Like the opening sequence, that goes absolutely nowhere, in the end.
This is quite sad, really, because the main message here is, essentially, how to combat anxiety, which is a really important topic. But honestly, I did not feel much of anxiety from Kaede in majority of the movie. There were only a couple of moments, and even in those she was not the focus. For example, a moment when she freezes near the school: great opportunity to show what's going through Kaede's mind, how she sees the world, but she is then shown standing still near a girl, that is just passing by. And that's it. Nothing else. It did not feel "intimate", did not feel "special".
Good things actually related to the main topic start only when it's been almost an hour, so roughly last 15 minutes of the movie. Maybe 20. But even that is kind of shallow, because Kaede's "revelation" is delivered mostly by one person. It's in no way unreasonable, the idol girl did explain thing in a good way, and in real life 1 encounter can change a lot. But we all know how deep Kaede's anxiety was running, so 1 conversation with 1 person may not have been enough (I am not counting Sakuta here).
In the end, I believe they could have made an OVA of this, rather than a movie. Maybe like 30 minutes, tops. Or maybe start a new season and make Kaede one of the subplots through-out the season. As is, I feel like I've been robbed of my time.
Also, this movie is another case of me watching a completely new piece of content and having really strong feeling that I've seen significant chunks of it before. Dunno what's happening. Is it just too similar to previous entries in the franchise? Or is it some brain damage? We'll probably never know for sure.
