Good animation, lovable characters, great music and somewhat of a generic story with decent amount of cringey drama made this a wonderful movie for me. Initially I thought this would be related to singing but that was only a smaller part of the bigger picture. This is a definite recommendation from my side.

Wow, such an unexpected cinema release! Sing a Bit of Harmony is a bit cute, a bit funny and kind of a bit more insane than I expected. Satomi is a high schooler, an honour student and also nicknamed Princess Tattletale by everyone in the school because of something she did in the past. She doesn't seem to have any friends. She checks her mum's schedule for the next day and notices that there's an AI Test coming up and it shows a photo of a human-like robot in the calendar. When the same robot shows up the next day at school, she realises that her mum's experiment involves her and her mum's job could be on the line if it fails. As always with new anime productions, the visual style and animation quality is absolutely top notch. I loved the backgrounds, the character designs (simple, realistic, even a little goofy - specifically how Toma has big, paranoid eyes and he isn't a typical "cute guy" in an anime), the attention to detail (background characters doing things when other characters are in dialogue) and the other visual effects utilised (like fireworks, for example). It was engaging, bright, colourful and enticing! I also felt like each character fit obviously into their archetype - Aya the popular girl, Goto as the school hunk, Toma as the computer nerd, Thunder as the jock/wrestler and Satomi, honor student and loner. I also liked the designs of the adults - you could see how Satomi and her mum were clearly related - and how the bad guy in Hoshima was clearly the bad guy (narrow eyes, sly voice). The voice acting was pretty good and I really liked the vocal quality - the singing is so clear and rich; it really came through well in the cinema experience. The songs were decent, though a bit corny and shallow, as expected given the plot and background of the character, and a couple of the non-vocal tracks did definitely feel like they belonged in a Final Fantasy game. I would probably never Spotify any of them but they were fitting. The story itself was decent. I could never have expected it from the poster - and I really felt quite emotional in some parts of it. I do have a few criticisms though - [spoiler]without Shion, would any of the characters been able to achieve anything? I understand she is the protagonist, but really she is basically a deus ex machina to facilitate communication. In the most glaringly terrible use of this, she literally sings a song about the rainy sky and hope that the two people will hold hands and shelter under an umbrella until the sky is clear again - and this somehow leads to Aya and Goto making up with minimal dialogue. These developmental scenes between the two are also only shown twice in flashbacks - given that they're such minor characters, it may have been unnecessary to do that at all and just have it be part of the natural dialogue seeing as Aya's friends constantly pine over Goto and tak about how amazing he is.[/spoiler] Despite that, I really do think that Goto himself was a really well-developed side character, over Aya and Thunder (who seemed amost completely 1-note the entire film). I really liked the growth of the characters Satomi and Toma and the history of their friendship. It's tough to balance so many main characters, but the movie really did its best. Worth a watch, such a charming film!

Honestly, the only reason I wanted to see this movie was because of the famous scene where the anime girl sings while doing judo with another boy, and apart from that scene, the film didn't really offer me much. On the bright side, Shion, the artificial intelligence that pretends to be human, is a likable character, whose innocence and optimism in interacting with others makes her endearing. And although her quest to make Satomi happy can be creepy, the fact that the film focuses on a happy future for AI and technology, where it genuinely makes the people around it happier, is nice, especially considering the apocalyptic future that pop culture has accustomed us to. On the downside, the first half of the film is a slice of life, where outside of the chaos generated by Shion's blind optimism, the film really has little to offer, and even then, the film feels a bit self-contained. I mean, it's an AI that sees the world with innocence, I think that could be explored further, and the film does little to take advantage of it. And the worst thing is that I think the film really didn't have much more to show than this, a cheerful AI living with teenagers, because the climax of the second half is more of a “we have to close with something” and little else, with such a big focus on optimism that the film ends up feeling very corny. In the end, the movie isn't bad, but literally the only interesting thing about it is the scene where Shion sings and dances while doing judo. Other than that, everything else is a cheerful and optimistic film, but one that has little or nothing to make it interesting.

Sometimes you just need a film that leaves you with a silly smile at the end, and this one more than delivers. ‘Ai no Utagoe wo Kikasete’ (in English ‘Sing a bit of harmony’) is an original, funny and super endearing story, the kind that doesn't need a lot of artifice to move you. It has that special charm that only good Japanese films have: lovable characters, a simple but effective story, and a sensitivity that touches your heart without the need to manipulate you. The animation is very careful, neither strident nor overloaded, with a soft and formal style that perfectly accompanies the tone of the story. And watch out for the songs, because as well as being charming, they are so well integrated that it seems as if they were always there. It's not a musical as such, but every time a song is played, everything makes more sense. And while it may seem light-hearted, at its heart it's a very moving story about artificial intelligences, empathy and what it really means to ‘feel’. But it does so without waxing philosophical or giving you a hard time: it lets it all out bit by bit, as you become attached to the characters and let yourself be carried along.

Ignoring my thoughts and feelings regarding AI in the real world. I really liked this movie a lot ❤