Saw this during the world premiere, an NHK broadcast (I'm in Japan and speak Japanese) and, while the CGI was initially off-putting - it looks like every other Japanese cartoon-to-CGI adaptation but with occasional Ghibli Eyes, and plastic SF5 Ken Banana Hair on everyone - it gradually started to win me over. Then, right when the story progression suggests that the third act is going to begin, as the past catches up with everyone, so that we can bring everything to a satisfying narrative conclusion... instead, we just get a smash cut to black and the credits.
The ending 100% feels like the cliffhanger to make you want to watch the second half of the movie. Unfortunately, so far as I am aware, there IS no second half. So instead, the movie just kind of tosses a bunch of narrative threads out, ignores all of them for nearly its entire runtime, and then remembers them all juuuuuust long enough to remind you that it ignored them entirely, before suddenly grinding to a halt.
Reasonably charming at times, if you're willing to accept that basically nothing that happens in the movie matters at all, and that there's no ending. Or, in other words, it's a modern Ghibli movie, I guess. Goro Miyazaki has inherited his father's knack for telling two thirds of a story.
