The second entry in Nobuhiko Obayashi's anti-war trilogy is infinitely stronger than its predecessor Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012), avoiding most of the latter's pitfalls with a more personal, less preachy tone, embodying many of the overarching themes and idiosyncracies of his whole filmography like the blurring of time and place, a sense of melancholy and nostalgia. Although it still could have benefited from some tighter editing and doesn't quite reach the (for Obayashi standards) clear vision and thematic density of Hanagatami (2017), this is made up for by its visual beauty. Of the three films this one's clearly the most gorgeously looking although (or maybe exactly because) the director is kinda holding back here, making rather sparse use of the intentionally artificial digital compositions dominating the other two films.