It's gonna be an unpopular opinion. Or so I thought, but reading some reviews, maybe not as unpopular as I expected. In short - it's just not that good.
Yes, the art is great. It reminded me of how I was watching all Ghibli's movies like 5-6 years ago and they did not feel outdated by any means. The style and general approach to art allowed those movies to age quite nicely, unlike some other old movies or shows. It looks unique, somewhat catchy even, and generally is a pleasure to watch, especially fluidity in certain scenes. But that's all there is here, just the view.
Ok, maybe not the only thing: the story does have a nice structure to it. Probably nothing special, and I would say there have been other stories with similar structure, but still. I was surprised, that it reminded me of one of the unfinished (and unpublished) stories, that I have called "Ira", even though it has a much darker tone and has spiders instead of birds. The problem is, that the story being told is... Shallow.
Don't get me wrong, I think I get the overall message(s): accept loss, accept new people, accept change, accept challenge... But there was little to no substance backing up these things. There was nothing behind any character besides the surface-level masks their showed. Besides maybe Heron, but that's more because of how chaotic he was. Which was part of the issue: his motivation are really ambiguous. Everyone's motivations are ambiguous.
I understand that this is a "weird" world, it does not have to follow our normal rules, but it does not mean it should not have some rules, that can make sense in the context of that world, whether the rules are forced or not. But things are happening because a writer told them to happen, not because there are rules. We are suggested to just accept everything because "it's magic". It might have worked in "Spirited Away", for example, but that world also had clear-cut rules, even though we were seeing just a small portion of it.
Till the very last scene I was hoping to see something "special", but I did not. And the ending fell completely flat for me. I think it would have been way better if everything turned out to be a mid-summer dream, or something that would have been questioned as a potential dream. Kind of like "Alice in Wonderland", where Alice also came to an insane world (still with rules), and then grew through her encounters to wake up a better person (regardless of whether it was a dream or not).
Instead the ending felt as if the deadline approached suddenly, and there was just no time to do something better. I felt like I wasted 2 hours of my life, and I would recommend you not to repeat my mistake.
