A potentially fascinating coming-of-age tale that never actually tries to do anything.
Creative Staff
Director: Akiyuki Shinbo and Nobuyuki Takeuchi
Producer: Genki Kawamura
Screenplay: Hitoshi Ohne
What They Say:
Shy Norimichi and fast-talking Yusuke are goo-goo-eyed over the same classmate, Nazuna. But Nazuna, unhappy over her mother’s decision to remarry and leave their town, plans to run away and has secretly chosen Norimichi to accompany her. When things don’t go as planned, Norimichi discovers that a glowing multi-colored ball found in the sea has the power to reset the clock and give them a second chance to be together. But each reset adds new complications and takes them farther away from the real world – until they risk losing sight of reality altogether.
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
A couple weeks ago, an email landed in my inbox hyping the limited run of the anime movie Fireworks in the movie theaters, and because I love to see anime in the theater, I jumped at the chance. Heading into the movie, I knew exactly one thing about it: it was produced by the same guy who produced Your Name (Kimi no Na Wa). As that often has little real bearing on how something turns out, I basically knew nothing about it. Again, I just went because “anime at the theater.”
Essentially a remake of a 1993 TV movie with the same name, Fireworks is an anime that tries to occupy a similar space to Your Name: a couple of young, would-be lovers are tied together by a fantastical force where understanding its metaphysical nature will be key to learning the truth about their lives and places each occupies in it. Also, like Your Name, Fireworks introduces a lot of fascinating concepts and plays with time in an increasingly intriguing way. Unfortunately, though, unlike Your Name, Fireworks never fully fleshes any of its intriguing concepts out and leaves us with an experience where nothing is ever solved.
Fireworks tells the story of Norimichi, a shy boy with a crush on the equally reclusive Nazuna. He’s not alone in this, as it seems most of the boys in his class feel the same way, including his best friend Yusuke. Unfortunately (unbeknownst to them at this time), Nazuna is getting ready to move away as her mother is about to remarry. Cleaning the school pool one afternoon, Norimichi and Yusuke run into Nazuna, who proceeds to challenge the two of them to a race, the winner of which gets to tell the others what to do. Nazuna wins the race handily. Norimichi would have come in second, but he gets distracted by Nazuna on the turn, misjudges his distance, and cracks his foot on the wall. In the time that it takes Norimichi to then finish the race, Nazuna asks Yusuke to accompany her to the town festival that night to watch the fireworks.
When he sees Nazuna, she is decked out in a traditional yukata and carrying a suitcase. She admits to Norimichi that she had hoped (and expected) that he would have beaten Yusuke in the race, and only asked Yusuke out because he won instead. She also admits that she is running away from home as she is not happy with her mother’s decision to remarry and move away. While she does like Norimichi, her ulterior motive at this point is to convince him to elope with her.
Before they can make any real rash decisions, though, Nazuna’s mother finds them and drags Nazuna back home. In the struggle, she drops her suitcase and a fancy glass marble she had found that morning at the beach (and that Norimichi had seen her admiring at various points). In anger, he throws the marble as hard as he can and wonders aloud how things might have turned out if he had beaten Yusuke instead. The marble freezes in midair, the world spins around him, and suddenly Norimichi finds himself a few hours earlier, back in the pool, and having completed the race without slamming his foot. This time, as he’s beaten Yusuke, he’s the one who is asked out, and the day proceeds to play out a bit differently. And this begins a series of “redos” where Norimichi rewinds time to replay a conversation, action, or whatever in order to “get things right” the next time. The question becomes whether or not “getting it right” is really “right.”
As noted above, Fireworks does a really good job of introducing interesting ideas. The time-travel mechanic is well-implemented and opens a lot of possibilities, not only for Norimichi and Nazuna, but for everybody around them too. The movie is constructed in a way that there are quite a few stories all happening at once, each of varying importance, and each affected by the way Norimichi changes the past. At the same time that the two star-crossed lovers are attempting to run away, Yusuke and his pals are attempting the long journey out to the lighthouse to watch the fireworks, and they keep crossing paths with Norimichi and Nazuna creating various amounts of confusion and consternation amongst them. Add in the search for Nazuna by her mother and soon-to-be step-father, the relationship status of the kids’ attractive teacher, and the very real possibility of alternate worlds that function differently (and what messing with time can actually do to reality), and Fireworks is a movie with a lot on its mind.
The problem is that while Fireworks asks a lot of questions, it doesn’t bother to search for any answers. I spent the entire time watching the movie wondering whether it would go the obvious route (Norimichi ultimately restoring the original timeline and convincing Nazuna that she is over-reacting, that she cannot go through life running away from her problems, and that everything would be okay in the long run) or whether it would throw a twist in our way. Either option has a lot of potential, but Fireworks opted for neither of them, instead just settling on Norimichi and Nazuna agreeing that they will be together someday once they return to reality (which reality that is, they don’t say), despite the fact that Norimichi is the only person with knowledge of everything that happened when he altered time. There’s no discussion about her acceptance (or lack thereof) of her new step-father, no real acknowledgment about what she was trying to accomplish even though she seems aware that it’s not going to work—nothing. Just a sense that they are glad they were able to spend the day together, and we’re moving on.
The lack of answers doesn’t just surround the two of them. Nobody gets any real resolution. In the original timeline, Yusuke stands up Nazuna despite all evidence that he likes her. Instead, he tells Norimichi to tell her he’s not coming. It’s never explored why he does this. Was he lying to everybody that he had a crush on her? Is he panicking about having a date with the girl of his dreams? Is he acknowledging that perhaps Norimichi likes her more and he’s doing his best friend a solid? We don’t know. It wouldn’t matter that much, except that when Norimichi changes the timeline so that he goes on the date with her, once Yusuke finds out, he spends the rest of the movie (and all of its various timelines) in a jealous rage that certainly appears to threaten their friendship. So what exactly is going on with him?
And what about Nazuna’s mother and probably step-father? We are introduced to him early on in a sympathetic way—we are led to believe that Nazuna is just being obstinate and that he is a pretty decent guy. And maybe once she grows up a little and accepts the inevitable, perhaps she might even like him. But then in the following timeline, he punches Norimichi when Norimichi tries to stop Nazuna from being taken by her mother. And he doesn’t punch Norimichi in a “I’m a father disciplining an unruly child” kind of way (if you accept that’s okay), but rather out of anger, and he just drives away after with no repercussions. So he’s presented initially as a decent guy, but he’s also a guy who apparently has no issues with assaulting a teenager he doesn’t know. Does this mean that there’s more going on in Nazuna’s household than we (or anybody) currently know? If not, then what is this about? We’ll never know, because Norimichi resets the timeline, dodges the punch the second time around, and we never think about it again.
Even the side-plot of Norimichi’s friends going on their Stand-by-Me style journey to discover whether Fireworks are round or flat are relegated to the mild curiosity pile, despite it easily being the second most important plot-point in the movie. We get a moment in the second timeline (after Normichi was assaulted by Nazuna’s mother’s boyfriend) where they have made it to the lighthouse ready to see that fireworks are really round, and instead, the fireworks explode flat and give a weird tone rather than the normal boom. It is at this moment that Norimichi realizes what he has done to the timeline, as well as what might be possible, and it kickstarts the next phase of the movie into gear, but then we never follow through on it. We return to the scene later, with just Norimichi and Nazuna on top of the lighthouse watching the fireworks now exploding in something akin to flowers rather than round or flat, but other than remark that they are different, we don’t explore any meaning this might have. Instead, we just keep resetting the timeline, Norimichi’s friends keep walking to the lighthouse, Yusuke continues being jealous, and nothing ever gets resolved.
What we’re ultimately left with is somewhat of a mess of a movie that is really interesting to watch and think about but is never able to figure out what exactly it wants to be. A lot of things are established, but nothing gets resolved. Interesting characters (such as Norimichi’s sassy mother and Yusuke’s distant but driven father) are introduced but then dropped almost immediately. Questions and concepts are raised but never answered, often forgotten the moment Norimichi throws that marble. Even when it tries to be clever (such as how the teacher’s voluptuousness is literally a setup for a one-line gag on the constantly recurring theme of round vs. flat), that cleverness is ultimately lost due to the lack of any real meaning behind anything else in the story.
Before we wrap this up, one last thing I want to mention on the topic of the gag that is the size and shape of the teacher’s breasts: Fireworks is a movie that is steeped, often uncomfortably so, in the male gaze. I get it: saying an anime is unduly influenced by the male gaze is the same as saying water is wet, but the point still stands. Within the first few minutes of the movie, we (along with Norimichi) take long looks at Nazuna standing out by the ocean, take a few ganders at the teacher as she bounces in on her bike, and then stare again at Nazuna as she lays by the pool in her swimsuit. Nazuna, more often than not, is the object of this movie’s gaze, as it never lets an opportunity pass to look at her butt, watch her undressing (no nudity), and observe her from as many angles as the camera can find. And to an extent, I get it: we are gazing at her in the same way that Norimichi and all the other horny thirteen-year-olds gaze at her. Objectification is a fact-of-life amongst the young and inexperienced. That said, growing out of objectification and seeing Nazuna for who she really is is not a component of Norimichi’s journey (at least, I assume it’s not since it’s never mentioned, but as nothing is ever resolved, who can say?), so it seems to be gratuitous more than anything else. And even if it was important, there might have been a better way to establish his juvenile leering in a way that wouldn’t involve the camera catching a thirteen-year-old girl at “all the right angles.”
In Summary:
In the end, Fireworks is both a fascinating and frustrating movie to watch. Fascinating in that it asks a lot of interesting and poignant questions. Frustrating in that it never bothers to answer any of them. Not all movies have to have real meaning (nothing wrong with a good popcorn movie), but Fireworks is definitely a movie that is trying to get us to think, but in doing so, it’s shortchanging its own opportunities to give its message. I’ve seen the argument made that Fireworks doesn’t provide answers because what thirteen-year-old boy is going to be able to find the answers to the questions this movie poses? That might be true, but that also defeats the purpose of telling stories. We read and watch stories in the hopes that they can help us discover some deeper and/or hidden truths, and yet Norimichi and his friends give us none. So I am left asking, what’s the point? I didn’t hate watching this movie; the pacing was good, the characters were often great, and it asked some really interesting questions. But at the end of the day, I’m not entirely sure what the point of all of it was, and that’s a problem. Thumbs in the middle, pointing down.
Content Grade: C
Released By: GKIDS
Running Time: 90 minutes