April Story is all about how simple and sweet a movie can be. You will be at total calm, quite and emotional while watching this movie. As a university student Uzuki Mireno has done a great job. She brilliantly potrays the character in the movie.

A girl moves from Hokkaido in the north to attend university in Tokyo. Shigatsu Monogatari shows how difficult this can be in terms of meeting new friends, socialize with the neighbours and a Shunji Iwai topic, love.

This is slow moving, some times very real-like. Some times it gets too slow, and at 67 minutes running time that is not too good. I have respect for the director, but what I have seen from him up until now has been not more than promising. It sometimes has the realism of Ozu, but not his actors or visuals. That said, its still a great movie. The sequence with the red umbrella was beautiful.

Everything in this movie is beautiful! The scenery is, the actress is, the whole story is. Although it's a very very simple love story, you can feel the internal beauty that the director want to express if you can calm very down to see it. Sometimes while seeing it, I even think the plot is no more important. All you should do is to feel the beautiful things in it. Takako Matsu is famous most because of her lovely performance in many Japanese soaps. However, we can still see her excellent performance in this movie. Meanwhile, Shunji Iwai shouldn't be forgotten. He is a very gifted young movie director. He is simply an artist. You can know more about Japan movies after seeing his works. Frankly, I love this movie completely due to Shunji Iwai and lovely Takako Matsu.