This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question and give my honest thoughts on it. Thank you for your support.
There’s a long, and pretty embarrassing, story behind this particular column.
A solid sixteen months ago, I was commissioned to watch this film by a Twitter follower. I added it to my queue and intended to get to it pretty promptly. After all, movies are pretty short time commitments compared to, say, a whole cour or two of TV anime. Somehow, over the next several months, I’d managed to incorrectly get it in my head that I’d gotten through the entire batch of commissions that I took around that time, instead of just most of them. A fair bit later into 2023, shortly before I had my massive burnout episode in August, I realized I’d never actually finished this, and another commission. (Which will hopefully be up on this site, soon, but is a bit more of a time commitment, being for a whole series instead of just a movie.) Yesterday, in the middle of January, a year and half later, I finally had both the time and motivation to watch and do a writeup on the film.
So that’s why this column exists. At this point, I have no method of contacting the original commissioner (I, a brilliant mind as always, forgot to write their name down, and I don’t have that Twitter account anymore), and thus have no way of letting them know the work has finally been completed. Hopefully, they somehow see this. If not, this is an endeavor I embarked on purely to make myself feel less bad about essentially scamming someone by accident. Genuinely, I feel pretty terrible about this whole thing, and this entire explanation is only that and not an excuse, of which I have none. But I figure the least I can do is give the film an honest go.
And if there’s a silver lining to this entire rigamarole, at least on my end, it’s that I got to watch a pretty decent sports movie. I’ll go farther actually; Farewell, My Dear Cramer: First Touch, is a good sports movie. It’s a fairly typical underdog’s journey kind of thing, with the additional slant that there’s a bit of tackling of sexism in sports here as well.
Our main character, Nozomi [Miyuri Shimabukuro], is forever frustrated that, following an injury in her first year of middle school, she’s not usually allowed to play in official matches with her school’s soccer team with all the boys, despite the fact that she really wants to.
Nozomi’s the one with her arm in a cast.
People tell her, explicitly, many times throughout the movie, that girls are just weaker than boys and that she will never be able to compete on even terms. This is a bit silly, even in-universe, because generally speaking, throughout the film, Nozomi is shown to be very good at soccer. The source of much of the film’s conflict is actually just that her soccer team’s coach [Kouji Yusa] won’t let her play in any serious context. He’s too worried that she’ll get seriously injured and ruin any chances of a future career, apparently ignorant of the psychological damage he’s doing in the present in the process. In his limited defense; Nozomi does get hurt during a game near the start of the film, but it’s hard to read his attitude as anything but condescending when this same incident is still being cited as a reason not to field her months later. It’s only toward the end of the movie that he changes his tune, and how that happens dovetails nicely with First Touch‘s other big thematic point; soccer as an expressive medium.
There’s an old cliché you’re probably familiar with: “it’s not about winning or losing, it’s how you play the game.” In First Touch‘s world, they’re instead about equally important, which is still more consideration of that old chestnut than a lot of sports anime give. Much of this, in the context of the film, is devoted to showing how truly dedicated Nozomi is to playing the game. It’s not just that she’s good at soccer, it’s that she’s passionate about it, and her friend Sawa [Shion Wakayama] describes her play as “inspiring.” A decent stretch of the film is devoted to showcasing her determination; she’ll practice ’til she drops, and if more formal equipment isn’t available she’ll practice kicking against concrete struts beneath a highway bridge under a grey, drizzly sky. It’s a common sort of visual language for this kind of movie, but it’s effective, and it does a lot to drive home that Nozomi cares a lot about soccer. It makes you care, too, even if you’ve never played the game in your entire life.
This isn’t necessarily as effective with some of the film’s other main characters. Take Yasuaki “Namek” Tani [Shinba Tsuchiya] for example, who we could probably call the film’s antagonist of sorts. Namek starts the film, in a before-the-main-story scene that takes place several years prior, as the curly-haired baby of a young Nozomi’s soccer-playing friend group, who nicknames her “Boss.”
When they meet again in the film’s present, he at first tries to be friendly, but when Nozomi, frustrated by the goings-on in her life, is hostile, he very quickly turns nasty and sexist, and some of what he says is downright gross.
Now, let’s be fair here; these characters are middle schoolers, and middle schoolers will absolutely just Say Some Shit to get under each others’ skin. But this whole exchange is definitely deliberately uncomfortable, and sets Namek up as the closest thing we have to an outright bad guy here. The thing is, Namek is also the other main character of this story, and he and Nozomi get about equal screentime. There’s something to be said here about how Namek doesn’t really seem happy with his own attitude, and tellingly, he abandons it at the end of the film. Misogyny does have an emotional impact on the men who propagate it, too, especially when they’re this young. The film’s attempt to address that is blunt, and doesn’t entirely connect, but trying at all is worth something, and it’s usually a decent sign when the worst thing you can say about a film’s thematics is that it’s probably trying a little too hard. This is all perhaps best encapsulated by a flashback to Nozomi rescuing a young Namek from a bunch of bullies by soccerballing them in the face, which is hilarious. Taking all of these things together, it’s clear that he actually idolizes her, which makes his macho disrespect of her just a few years later in life, evidently a cover for his own insecurity, kind of sad.
All of this is fine, on its own. However, as Nozomi and Namek’s rivalry escalates, it quickly gains a romantic overtone that it really probably didn’t really need. I can’t help but wonder if the movie wouldn’t feel more coherent if Nozomi’s rivalry with him lacked this inflection, since it can make the film’s portrayal of Namek a bit muddled and notably less sympathetic, since it feels like it’s trying to build an excuse for him. (The whole “boys pick on girls that they like” trope.) Middle school kids hate each others’ guts for much less good reason than Nozomi has here, there’s no reason to turn it into a romantic thing beyond lacking the imagination to do something else with the plot here, and it’s just a little disappointing to see the movie fall back on cliché in that way. That said, in the final stretch of the film, we do get a very nice scene of Nozomi reminiscing about how far he’s come as a player, actively cut in with the ongoing final game, and it’s very visually striking, so that’s something.
Let’s talk visuals in general, in fact. There’s something notable in how First Touch feels like the starting point for LIDENFILMS’ ongoing flirtation with nighttime settings; enough of the movie takes place at night, including a couple pivotal scenes, that it’s noteworthy, and this seems like foreshadowing of the powers they’d later put to fuller practice with Call of The Night and Afterschool Insomniacs. I know the Farewell, Cramer TV series is not liked specifically because of its production woes, but the movie doesn’t really struggle with that at all, perhaps indicative of shakeups of some sort at LIDEN around that time, although without having any primary sources on hand it’s hard to say for sure.
Sonically, there’s not much to say, other than that First Touch has a heavy reliance on insert music that veers between endearing and cloying. Not exactly a rare phenomenon in this genre, but at its best it does make the soccer feel more impactful.
All told, First Touch is very much at its best when reinforcing the point that competition isn’t all there is to these things. Its highest points highlight soccer’s ability to serve an expressive medium, and its value as, purely, a fun activity. (Again, remember that all of these characters are middle schoolers, we’re talking 14 year olds or so at oldest here. Nobody in these games is actually playing for world championships or anything, despite Nozomi’s Coach’s high hopes for her as the film comes to a close.)
The final game, where Nozomi is able to play in an official school-to-school match by pulling off the brilliantly silly maneuver of stealing her brother’s jersey and sneakily substituting herself in in the second half of the game. Films like this need to have A Sports Moment of this type, where the actual rules of the game are, if not flouted, definitely at least stretched to their limit, in the service of an elevated hyperreality. This moment is basically the only thing First Touch does that’s like this, but it makes it count. In the end, Nozomi’s team loses the game but she wins a far more important emotional victory over Namek. (Honestly I might’ve preferred a clean victory, but whatever.) In First Touch‘s closing minutes, the two reconcile, and Namek sobbingly confesses his love to her in a pretty hysterical cry of “SUKI DA, BOSSU.” This doesn’t change the fact that Nozomi honestly has more chemistry with her gal pal Sawa than she does with Namek—it is after all, Sawa’s cheering that encourages Nozomi to make the inspiring, climactic play that eventually earns her the respect of the rest of her team—but it’s a cute and funny note to end on, enough that it can make some of the film’s writing flaws easy to forgive.
If there’s a downside to this whole ending bit, it’s that the movie is probably a little longer than it needs to be. (Remember what Pompo said about the 90-minute rule.) Personally, I count no less than three points where the movie could’ve ended but felt the need to try stretching its last emotional beats one more time. That’s a reductive and overly mathematical way to qualify these things, of course. The film drags, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome badly enough to undo its stronger points. The film understands the expressive power of sport, and that pulls it through any issues it might have. If not necessarily a great film, it’s firmly a pretty good one.
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