Love Me, Love Me Not

Toshimasa Kuroyanagi's 2020 Japanese animation follows four high school students who think about love in entirely different ways. Yuna dreams romantically and Akari is practical; Kazuomi does not grasp the concept at all, while Rio keeps his distance because of something he carries from his past. The film opens the relationships among the four in turn. Who feels what for whom keeps changing and the narrative puts none of them in the wrong; misunderstanding here is not an event but a normal condition. It is adapted from Io Sakisaka's manga. The animation is clean and the palette soft; the pace is calm with little dramatic rise. It runs a little over ninety minutes. Who it's for: those who like Japanese youth animation and romantic drama. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a complex narrative; the film follows the familiar structure of the genre.