Blue Thermal fits into the genre of slice-of-life anime centered around students partaking in a school club together. Somewhat unusual for the genre, it takes place in college rather than high school, probably because there are a lot more colleges than high schools that host aviation clubs where students can pilot expensive gliders. That's it as far as anything that could be described as “unusual” about this movie, which cycles through familiar tropes with mixed degrees of success.

The film's best part is its main character, Tamaki “Tsurutama” Tsuru. This klutzy excitable freshman is ready to start her “normal” college life, only for things to instantly take a turn when she trips over and damages one of the aviation club's gliders. Sooner than you can say, “Ouran High School Host Club,” Tsurutama is recruited into the club in hopes of helping them win a big competition prize that would pay off the damages. She might be awkward on the ground but proves incredibly gifted in the air despite her lack of experience. The story of a directionless young person finding her calling is a tried and true one for a reason, and the presentation of this story here succeeds emotionally in large part due to the strength of the character's reactions, both the variety of funny faces she makes and the great line reads from first-time voice actress Mayu Hotta.

Beyond the protagonist, unfortunately, the rest of the characters are pretty forgettable. There are two potential love interests for Tsurutama: club leader Jun Kuramochi and Daisuke Sorachi. Generously, I could describe Jun as the “Yuki” of the story (cool, serious) and Daisuke as the “Kyo” (hot-headed, jealous), but there's not really enough solid characterization for either man to make viewers root for Tsurutama to end up with one or the other. Not that there's much in the way of resolving this conflict anyway — the love triangle ends up being a minor side story in a film that feels packed with too many side stories.

The story cycles through assorted antagonists: Tsurutama's grudge-holding older half-sister Yano, loud rival Kaede Hatori, and Jun's manipulative benefactor You Asahina. The various conflicts introduced offer brief uppings of the stakes in what's otherwise a very low-key anime, though these issues either get resolved quickly or not particularly satisfyingly. It makes for a pretty episodic movie, as if this was a compilation film for a TV series with more fleshed-out arcs. And that's almost exactly what this is, according to director Masaki Tachibana. Having not read Kana Ozawa's five-volume original manga, I couldn't tell you what exactly was cut or condensed, but on principle, this material would have been better suited to a 12-episode TV show like it was initially planned. The material's quiet hangout vibes, punctuated by short dramatic arcs, could have thrived with more space to flesh out the supporting cast and make them all as appealing as the lead.

Moving Blue Thermal to TV certainly wouldn't affect it much visually. Like a lot of the film, the animation is fine but not exceptional, with nothing that couldn't be pulled off for a solid TV production. The gliding scenes are pretty, but this is different from a Studio Ghibli film in terms of depicting the wonder of flight (though admittedly, there's also a lot less there to really animate with gliders in contrast to planes or more elaborate flying machines). Shōgo Kaida's musical score does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of carrying the emotion of these sequences.

It's understandable why ElevenArts sent Blue Thermal straight to video in the US, skipping the limited theatrical runs they do for most of their anime movies. It's not as if there's much that's actively bad about the movie, and a likable protagonist goes a long way towards keeping things breezy and enjoyable, but its pleasures are mild, and the experience of watching it is almost instantly forgettable.