Starting as a manga series written by Negi Haruba back in 2017, The Quintessential Quintuplets got a popular anime adaption back in 2019, with a second season following in 2021, both of which are currently streaming on Crunchyroll. The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie aims to wrap up the story, showing which of the quintuplets Futaro Uesugi confesses to.
If you’ve not seen the anime series or are otherwise familiar with the story, this 2+ hour movie isn’t for you. It is very much a finale and not a standalone feature.
As a brief disclaimer, I’m watching an early preview of the official subbed version, but it will be available both dubbed and subbed on release.
Dreams for the Future
After a brief flash of fanservice and a glimpse of the past, The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie starts as the characters are preparing for their final school festival. ‘Final’ is the keyword here. It’s highlighted throughout the movie that their school life is coming to a close and choices need to be made.
The key choice is the one that the whole series has been leading up to – which of the girls will Futaro end up with? While I’ll not mention specifics for those who haven’t watched the series yet, it’s clear to the audience by this point that they’ve all grown to like him. Who Futaro will choose isn’t the only question about the future here. Future dreams and aspirations, along with how they link into the past of each character is a theme repeated for each character. This continues nicely from the same topic that came up in the anime series.
Final Festival
The first part of the movie covers the events of the festival. As part of this, it tells five interlinking stories. Each shows the festival from the perspective of the quintuplet and their encounters with Futaro. It’s done in quite an interesting way, labeling it as an ‘ If she were at the last festival with Futaro’ story, but having each one interlink into a larger story. Events happen in these short stories that are explained in the others. It worked well as a way to give each of the quintuplets their time in the spotlight and hopefully satisfy the person watching, even if their favorite doesn’t win in the end.
On that, even though a certain quintuplet does get more screen time than the others, each one is included, even after a choice has been made clear.
The five stories are quite different, but they give an insight into each of the characters featured. They show past events, their growth as a person, and further insight into relationships with family. Each one was interesting, but Itsuki’s had a particularly notable event happen.
Throughout this first part of the movie particularly, while the questions are all about the future, it often revisits important moments from the series and gives new insights into events from their childhood. As someone who has watched the series, I found a lot of context being given to events that were only mentioned or hinted at before.
Before Bride
The second part of the movie picks up the pace quite a lot. It’s shown right from the start that a choice will be made eventually and it happens in this movie. It follows up with a focus on the relationships of everyone involved – it’s a delicate situation and I’m glad they didn’t make it drama-free. I enjoyed one twist in particular, which came as a surprise, but was very in character and this was reinforced by their behavior in the first half.
It then flicks through quite a lot of events quickly. I didn’t feel that it was rushed and it makes sense that they spent as much time as they did on the school festival, instead of making these parts longer. It kept up with the same themes too, about future aspirations and family relationships. This kept up to the end.
Serious Sisters
While The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie is a romantic comedy and has several funny moments, I felt like the tone and topics were often quite serious. This felt apt for the finale of the series, with all of the drama coming to its climax. Tensions were high at several points, not just over Futaro’s choice but the relationship with their parents. The quintuplet’s mother made an appearance in several flashbacks and references too, which could be quite depressing at times.
Despite covering a lot of serious topics, humor was used well to break it up. Whether it was teasing Futaro, Miku’s jealousy, or other funny moments, it was certainly needed.
Verdict
The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie is meant to wrap up the series and I feel like it did it well. It answered a lot of questions and clearly showed a winner, unlike several similar series finales. While my favorite wasn’t chosen, by the end of the movie I could appreciate any of the potential choices. That said, it didn’t exactly keep me guessing – I had a good guess early on at who would be chosen.
I appreciated the strong focus the movie shows on both familial relationships and the connection between past events and current or future ones. It did pack a lot more drama in than I was expecting coming from the anime, but as a finale, it made perfect sense. The ending nicely finished it off and I left feeling like everything was resolved.
THE QUINTESSENTIAL QUINTUPLETS MOVIE IS RECOMMENDED
Both seasons of the anime series can be found on Crunchyroll.
If you enjoy anime, you may be interested in our review of Robotics;Notes Elite or Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen.
Many thanks go to Crunchyroll for an advanced screening of this movie.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
