[Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers for the film “Till We Meet Again on the Lily Hill.]

No survey of recent Japanese films about World War II would be complete without “Till We Meet Again on the Lily Hill,” Yoichi Narita’s gushy fantasy about a high school student who gets transported back in time to 1945 and falls in love with a kamikaze pilot. Released in December 2023, it barely registered internationally but was a huge hit at home, where it became one of the highest-grossing movies of 2024.

Now we have a sequel, once again based on a novel by Natsue Shiomi (published in 2020). However, “Till We Meet Again on the Starry Hill” feels driven by a commercial motive rather than narrative necessity — all the more so given that it departs so significantly from its source material that Shiomi was compelled to write a standalone novelization of the movie.