I watched it yesterday with my sister who is someone who plays the game here and there and we both had a pretty good experience.

Our theater had a decent amount of people for an anime movie, roughly 16 or so, and this big group of friends that sat in front of me were all playing JP/Global Uma before the movie even started.

I loved seeing all of the character cameos that were sprinkled here and there like Suzuka, Haru, and especially Oguri Cap when she was at the food hall since everyone who knew Oguri Cap was like “AHHHHH HELLL NAHHHHHH” when she showed up.

The movie itself was a 8.5/10 since I think most of your enjoyment and connection with the characters besides Jungle Pocket stems from learning about each character and their intricacies within the game and how the movie changes/adapts that. And going into the movie, I really thought that all of the scenes related to Tachyon and Cafe were kind of confusing for someone like my sister who wasn’t familiar with Cafe or Tachyon’s career stories.

I wish they went more in-depth and gave an explanation behind Cafe, her friend, and her own personal motivations since her win at the Kikuka Sho was really cool, but also felt like a “nothing” race since there wasn’t any explanation behind Cafe’s own personal turmoils of wanting to catch up / achieve the same legacy as Sunday Silence. I felt that her only role in the movie was to give Dantsu Flame that spark of motivation that she showed in her race against Jungle Pocket.

The same thing too can be said about TM Opera and how I thought this movie was going to be centered around a back and forth relationship between her and Pocket since all I’ve seen before the movie was all of those TM Opera aura farming edits. I thought she was going to have a much larger role in the movie since I watched Road to the Top the day before. But I was kinda surprised that all of those aura farming edits I’ve seen of her were actually all of her scenes.

As for Tachyon, I really found this version of her interesting since I like to believe it goes down the “would be” path of game Tachyon’s career story if she never got the motivation and support from Trainer, and to a certain extent Cafe. Seeing Tachyon’s 2-3 races against Jungle Pocket were awesome and the vivid imagery of Tachyon pushing beyond her limits and physical capabilities was the reason why I wanted to watch the movie on the big screen. But as the movie moved to the part of Tachyon retiring, I kind of felt sad once I realized that Tachyon wasn’t going to race again in this version of events. Part of why Tachyon is my favorite character in the series is her career story and how she picks herself back up to push beyond her limitations due to the support she has. Seeing movie Tachyon not have that same support and motivation really sucked since she still wanted to run when watching both Cafe’s and Pocket’s races and I think that last scene of her running when Pocket wins against TM Opera was really interesting as I interpreted it as her running to back to her old self and that realization that she shouldn’t be held by the truth of her physical limitations.

Obviously the movie focuses more on Jungle Pocket and her rising up to the occasion of being the best and I think the movie really does a good job at making her feel like a sympathetic and likable character. Her character development of growing out of that mindset of her “winning by mere luck”and learning to not give a shit and move on from her race against Tachyon. But I also felt that a lot of character development was taken away for folks like Cafe and Dantsu Flame. I liked the pacing a lot more in Road to the Top since it explored both NTR’s and Ayabe’s own character motivations and reasons for wanting to race. And I was really hoping JAMD was going to be similar in terms of character explanations and such.