The first time I watched this film, I'll be honest, I wasn't entirely engaged in all aspects of the film - I was only interested in watching Mari and Mattsun's parts. However, I recently revisited this film again and this time being fully engaged in all plot points, I’m sorry but I have to say this movie is kind of a disappointment and has so many flaws. I have completed the anime and am in the middle of reading the manga so I have a grasp of the original source material now. The first time I watched this film, I wasn’t aware of the many inherent issues with this film adaptation as tbh I just skipped to Mari and Mattsun’s scenes, which is why I initially gave it a relatively high rating because I think their storyline was done pretty well in the film and is the only redeeming part of it.

Firstly, my main issue is that this film has terrible pacing - everything moves too quickly and they essentially don’t give enough time to let the characters or story to ✨ marinate✨. Because of this, it's really hard to become invested in each characters' struggles. It also makes the timeframe of when scenes are taking place to be confusing. There were so many quick time shifts that at one point, I was confused about whether a following scene I was watching was in their current present or a few months later. This issue in itself is unrelated to the film's inability to stay true to its original source material.

That being said, being a manga film adaptation, not enough thought was put into understanding the original source material. Knowing the original source material well enough, I am bewildered at how they got each of the characters’ personalities so wrong. Natsuki comes off as cocky and annoying whereas in the manga, he is a loveable clumsy pure-hearted fool. Tsuyopon was probably the character done the worse and felt nothing like the manga character. The manga character is stone faced but secretly soft, so why was he so lively and goofy in the film? He is supposed to be the calm and collected one but they made him exactly like the others - immature and childish. Keiichi was done alright - I understand why they had to remove the intensity of the original character's sex kinks out. Though it would have been better if they made his character more lively to make up for the removal of that key part of the original character's personality. Mattsun was probably the only character done relatively well in still maintaining the essence of the original character's personality.

It felt like there was no real substance to this film and that I was watching four teenage guys just being immature and stupid for the entire duration of the film with no meaningful purpose. The film's fast pacing deprived us of seeing any true development between the characters. What bothered me particularly was how we didn’t see the development of Anna and Mari slowly becoming friends with the guys. They presented it as them just having to hang out with the guys and becoming used to it rather than them developing a fondness for the guys and actually enjoying spending time with them.

It seemed like the film adapted specific scenes from the original manga but put their own spin on it? But they didn’t do it very well. Honestly, this film would have been a bit better if they literally just did a scene by scene portrayal of the original manga than the fast paced mess they ended up concocting that seemingly had no consideration for the original source material.

Now my favourite part of the film! Which really lends weight to why I was able to enjoy this film to an extent and will rewatch it. Mari and Mattsun. The only storyline that actually had any development. And I’m glad they didn’t fuck it up because they’re my favourite part of the original manga. Mari’s character in the film is definitely a tamer version of the original character, but understandably so, because she is really intense in the manga. Literally all criticisms I've mentioned for this film are absent from the Mari-Mattsun storyline. The pacing was done well (as well as it could be for this film) - we got to see them first meet and become aware of each other, develop an understanding of each other, which leads to fondness and romantic feelings, etc. The two characters' personalities stay pretty true to the original manga characters. And their interactions with each other actually lead to meaningful personal character development!!! Whereas for Natsuki and Anna, it felt like we were just thrust into their interaction with seemingly no idea of how they came to know each other and it’s just them pining after each other but we don’t know why or the reason they’ve become truly infatuated to the other person due to lack of development.

Overall, honestly a very poor adaptation and I would rate it worse if I didn’t love Mari and Mattsun so much.