Ok I must confess that I wasn't a fan of it, save for visuals which were great. I'm not trying to write a review that can be understood without seeing the film, the film is about 45 minutes and available everywhere online, go see it if you're curious! Everything's spoilers but not really.

I thought that the action was quite unmotivated. Takao's actions were somewhat motivated, but something that's been done over and over - follow your dreams narrative, love lifts souls up and helps angels fly. It took almost the whole film to learn what miss Yukino was about. My favorite moment of her was actually when she grabbed tons of chocolate bars out of her handbag as if she was a gross slobby chocolate gremlin, especially as the film was so nonjudgmental about it. It's a thing you rarely see in film.

I got the metaphor that Takao is helping miss Yukino to learn to walk and water washes away old dirt that's making them lonely, just didn't find it cashed out satisfactorily.

(I'm willing to accept that the tanka poetry part might have been foreshadowing that was completely obvious from the start if I were clued in enough into Japanese culture.)

Wasn't a big fan of the soundtrack, it seemed a bit trite to me, trying to hit the emotional notes that weren't present in the story to begin with.

My very simple fix for the movie: tell the story out of order, start with miss Yukino's past troubles (tell more about them), jump into the her getting fired, then introduce Takao to the audience and let it know more about her than him. Then let Takao figure out what the audience already knows. BAM four Oscars, folks!

BTW it totally seems like I'm in a minority of people for not liking the film much. According to one DailyMotion commenter I'm dead inside.