SMILE
Aww, what a beautiful, touching story. I'm so glad they were both able to break through their emotional barriers. I'm surprised so many people consider this a sad ending. I think it's very happy and very hopeful. Facing that pain, they could have given up, but they persevered. What happens after that is ambiguous in some ways, but we do know for sure that they're happy, and someday Ren gets his smile back. The bullying and teacher reactions and such were hard to sit through, and I hate that those shits got away with it. But a lot of awful people get away with awful things, and smaller towns can still be very homophobic and xenophobic (hence how they mocked Wayne for being a foreigner). I'm relieved it didn't fall to pieces when everyone kept calling it "realistic." Sometimes that's code for "they die or break up." Which is really annoying, because it might be realistic on some level, but it's not like it's the standard. EDIT: Holy crap, that additional information. This almost had a brutal ending. O_O Glad they changed it, honestly. It would have been powerful, but it would have been so miserable. Similar to a beautiful Korean short film about homophobia and bullying, only it goes through with the sad ending. :(
Tomarigi (Torch)