This is already a symptom and not a coincidence: the in-between animators are modern youngsters, they don't want to to sit in the studio office and slave away until midnight like people did in Ghibli, they want to go home early and have a life.
I'm joking, of course, but here's the result: despite being 'gekijouban', or 'theatrical movie', 'Haikara' is no Ghibli, and the in-between animation is so poor it seems Ranmaru is shaking with convulsions when he's supposed to be performing a traditional Japanese dance, where 'traditional' inevitably means graceful and smooth. Compared to the beautiful, but static backgrounds, moving sprites in less important scenes are just as awful as they were in TV series from 90s with a very limited budget and very limited production time.
I am surely getting repetitive, but how can I pretend I don't see it when I do: Benio is already beyond the first dozen in my list of shoujo Heroines possessing the same traits:
positive and cheerful - check
tomboyish, fights and climbs up trees though she's not supposed to - check
clumsy in everyday life, poor at household chores and bad at studying - check
capable of a profound feeling - check
has at least one or even a whole harem of boys falling in love with her, but choosing her only one - check
finds happiness even after something devastating happens - check
This may be still continued.
There's one more common trait I haven't yet mentioned in the list which is the one that makes me instantly disappointed:
No, you don't have to change your mind and suddenly start doing your best in something you weren't initially interested in every time somebody points out you can't do it.
We must remember that the original manga and TV series were created in 70s when this kind of shoujo was a standard. And while the original TV series may be watched as a specimen of its own kind, the new 'Haikara' is nothing more than a very unskilled attempt to pack a very long manga into a little more than 3 hours, which is the length of 2 movies combined.
Certain moments introducing an element of humour made 'Haikara' watchable, thanks to the level of their absurdity.
'Haikara' has probably one of the highest concentration of stereotypes per a unit of time. Not only Benio is that typical shoujo Heroine, but everything that happens to her seems to be taken from some kind of 'how to write a shoujo' manual, and under a condition that anyone who fails to follow the instruction wouldn't be published. Of course, her beloved regains his memory, and of course there's some woman fatally ill or hurt whose side he cannot leave, and of course the Heroine wouldn't want that woman to suffer, so she decides to break up, and of course she pretends she loves another good guy, but of course that's not true, and of course he understands because he's such a good guy, of course another woman conveniently dies and of course a happy ending follows. Wait, I know a story that didn't have that convenient ending. Well, at least something is different in those old shoujos.
Why did you bother at all to hire such nice voice actors, I wonder, Nippon animation? I mean, you didn't give a damn about animation, story, characters even - so why Miyano and Hayami? Kazuya Nakai and Kenta Miyake, voicing the two favourite characters of mine - just because they weren't as predictable and were real fun, were particularly impressive. Others were pretty good too.
My guess is - there was no money left. Maybe you can turn to crowdfunding, dear Nippon animation?
By the way, Vodka again - that hurts. I mean it, stop mentioning it whenever Russia is discussed. It's not funny already. Well, I'm grateful they didn't write ВОЛКА instead.
By the way, there is no such flower as 'malinka', which is an affectionate-diminutive form of 'malina', which stands for 'raspberry' and generally means either berries or the plant itself. I'm actually not sure what kind of raspberry is mentioned here, but there seems to be a smaller kind of raspberry called 'Manchurian' or 'Tibetian'. And even then, it's not the thing that Russians call 'malinka'.
I also doubt a member of aristocracy would be called by his short name Sasha by his aristocrat wife speaking about him to a third party.
And no, they didn't wear thick coats or hats with fur in summer. Even in Irkutsk.
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