Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl

 Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl (青春ブタ野郎はゆめみる少女の夢を見ない) is a theatrical slice of life supernatural romance movie based on the light novel of the same name and Rascal Does Not Dream of His First Love, both by Kamoshide Hajime and MIzoguchii Keeji.  The movie was released in Japan in 2019.

 

 

  - WARNING - 

THIS REVIEW NECESSITATES SPOILERS THAT ARE PRETTY IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT OF THE FILM AND WILL RUIN YOUR VIEWING EXPERIENCE.  PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

    

    The movie picks up about a month after the last episode of the TV series, covering the 6th and 7th books in the light novel series.  We find Sakuta finally being able to enjoy his life, even if the post 'adolescent syndrome' version of his sister is gone.  He and Mai can finally get down to being a couple...that is until the adult Makinohara Shoko turns up again.  She reveals that she and the younger Shoko are connected and due to that she is unable to return home until the situation she finds herself in is resolved.  Expressing her fondness for Sakuta, she forces herself into living at his apartment until then.  Mei, not wanting anything to develop between her boyfriend and his first love, also forces herself to stay at his apartment.  Sakuta's fantasy is quickly squashed by Mei and he is force to sleep alone in the living room.

    It is soon learned that the younger Shoko is suffering from a heart issue, leading to her being frequently hospitalized and in need of a heart transplant.  Older Shoko's 'adolescent syndrome' as well as Sakuta's seem to be tied to younger Shoko's physical ailment.  After some prodding and questioning, older Shoko reveals a few key pieces of information to Sakuta about the connection and the reason they are suffering from the syndrome.  While not knowing everything, the amount he does learn pushes him towards making the most important decision he has ever faced.  The consequences of the way he solves the issue prove to be more disastrous than he imagined, leaving him to fall into a dark depression.

     It took me a long time to gather my thoughts about how to approach discussing this movie.  It had a significant impact on my mental health to be honest.  The closest I can come to the emotional reaction I had would be Koizora with its emotional roller coaster of a story.  At one point I stood up and yelled in shock and horror, my daughter asking me if we should pause the film so I could calm down.  At first I was not going to write about it for the blog, but then thought I would instead write something talking about the characters and premises of the series in-depth.  The I decided to do a basic review, not revealing any major plot points of the movie.  Still with this draft of the post I tried to hide as much of the surprise portions of the story as possible.  But I was still unsatisfied with writing what amounted to be an empty description of this film that affected me as much as it did.  To reiterate, this movie did some emotional damage to me.  So here we are, with a fourth attempt at conveying my thoughts and feelings about this movie for the blog.

    I absolutely loved this film and strongly desire more of the story to be available.  I greatly enjoy time travel, parallel world manipulation and emotionally realistic and riveting tales.  Which is one of the reasons The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is one of my top movies of all time (not just compared to other anime).  This movie does a really fantastic job of entering that list as well.  From the first episode of the TV series I had fallen in love with the characters, the writing and the world.  I had a great fondness already going into the movie and when it suddenly drops a heart-wrenching tale on top of a very agreeable setting...yeah, it was very impactful.  The movie ends in a way that can reasonably be thought of as the conclusion of Sakuta's world from a literary point.  But, the light novel has kept going from this point, pushing out three more volumes at the time of this posts creation.  While we know there is more story to translate to video the movie ends in a way that is satisfying from a completion-ist viewpoint.  All of the answers have been given to whats been going on with everyone involved, so anything else would just be starting fresh from new plot lines.  But given that there is more story we will hopefully see that brought to the screen in due time...until then I await the English adaptions of the light novels to hurry the hell up!