Overview:
Hina’s fallen in love with an upper classman but then he graduates and goes to highschool. She follows along a couple of years later but still can’t approach him. Meanwhile, her childhood friend and neighbour only has eyes for her and has also enrolled at the same school. And just about everyone else in the show has a crush on everyone else.
Review:
In case you were thinking from the overview that this does not sound like my kind of thing, you’d be right. But every now and then I am in the mood for a sappy romance and this seemed like it would be a good use of my Sunday evening. I wasn’t exactly wrong but I wasn’t exactly right either.
For sixty minutes, this is going to feel longer. Much, much longer depending on your taste in music. I’ll get this complaint out of the way first because it is the biggest one. You get around five minutes of story and then the music starts and you get a montage. There’s a study montage, a pining over the girl next door montage, a working together montage, a anything that my vaguely be a development in the story montage. While these musical interludes are all interrupted for a few lines of dialogue, mostly you’ll just listen to the music and watch characters go through the motions of telling a story. Whether this charms you or bores you silly will depend on whether this soft rock poppy music does anything for you or not. I was kind of on the fence. It wasn’t hideous enough for me to mute it but neither was I enthralled and the visuals were okay but not rich enough to make up for the long periods of time these scenes took up.
However, if that isn’t going to be an issue and if you happen to like love stories told through music, you will probably enjoy the rest this has to offer. The characters are all pretty standard as are the developments. It is pretty obvious from the start who Hina is going to end up with in the end but watching her work through her emotions is still enjoyable enough. She cries a lot though. And part of me kept wondering if I was supposed to care more about her sadness but it was more just kind of another step on a fairly predictable journey so I didn’t really feel that emotionally invested in it.
I didn’t mind child-hood friend and neighbour. He’s also pretty stock standard in terms of a character but of all the characters in the story he’s probably the one I’ll actually remember next week from this story. That said, he needs to ditch his friends. What is it with anime boys having that sleazy friend that they get embarrassed by but they never seem to tell them where to go? Do these characters actually hang around people who deliberately make them uncomfortable for a reason?
I was also pretty happy with how the classmate developed. At first she seemed the typical rival/troublemaker existing only to throw a spanner in the works. While she doesn’t get a lot of development (sixty minutes and most of it taken up by montages), she actually has a nice turn around in her character arc and its kind of sweet. Part of me wanted her to get a happy ending out of this as well.
Basically, this isn’t doing much more than a lot of other romances and while it is doing it okay, it isn’t great or mind blowing. Certainly not a terrible way to spend an evening by neither is it something I’m going to really think about in the future.
If you’ve had a chance to watch it I’d love to know your thoughts.
The Moment You Fall in Love is available on Crunchyroll.
Are you a fan of 100WordAnime.blog?
If you like this site and you like what I do, consider becoming a patron.
Thanks,
Karandi James.
I have been considering expanding my horizons into romance anime buuut I don’t think something like this will work for me. Nice review though!
Probably not. Have you tried My Love Story?
It’s on top of the romance pile tbh. I’m pretty sure it was a review of yours that made me want to watch it too.
I think because while its a romance the comedy parts actually work pretty good and there’s a good friendship story in there as well. It isn’t too sappy but still plenty sweet. Nice balance of elements really for those who want romance but not too much.
Even though I really liked your review, and the series doesn’t sound too bad, I think I will pass on this one. It really does not seem like my cup of tea. Glad your sunday was well spent though, and that you enjoyed watching this one 😊
I’m not seeing you as the target audience for this one. Normally I wouldn’t watch it either but as I said, every now and then a bit of romance is nice.
This seems like it’s not that bad of a show, I might give it a try. Nice review!
If you are into romance, you’ll probably have fun.
i had the same problem with the music…didnt really interest me. still, i found the rest of the movie pretty frustrating too. the first two minutes alone were enough to give a bad impression. getting upset with someone for something you did and then falling in love with him when you find out he’s an upperclassman? how does that work? i also didnt get why the rival character even cared to mess with the main character. what beef did she have with her?
The way the characters met kind of sucked but its fairly standard by anime standards so I just let that go, and I didn’t mind how things developed, but it really did have too many characters and things going on for its run time so none of it felt really fleshed out or developed.
i didnt get that either. they seemed to make a point to introduce a bunch of characters and their love interests, but they got largely ignored. i think this movie is part of a series, so im guessing their stories are meant to be for another time? i guess it just consistently frustrated me while i was watching
I think it wsa LynLyn who did a review of the movie that comes before this one. It seemed to focus on the older brother and sister. I’m not interested enough to check it out, but I guess it is nice that people who get swept up in this story can see more of some of the other characters.