This was a strange little film. I say 'little', but it seemed much longer than its 72 minutes. I repeatedly fast-forwarded through bits of it, the pacing dragged so unnecessarily. As is typical in Japanese productions, the script was trite and under-written, and numerous sequences and characters were superfluous and annoying.<br /><br />It did, however, have moments of brilliance. Some of the animation was quite nice, and the art was really lovely in several sequences. The music wasn't bad, either. The final scenes concerning the Little Match Girl might actually have been longer ( and welcomely at the expense of some of the irritating comedic portions ).<br /><br />This, again, was a $1 DVD from Wal-Mart, and the transfer to the DVD was often blurry. I'm wondering if it was 'digitally trashed' like so many animated dvds.