IGN's A.E. Sparrow said that compared with the film, the manga has "a healthy amount of additional storylines, characters and dialogue ... " He also said, "Mizu Sahara's artwork brings a bit of clarity to scenes that might have come off as muddled in the anime". Anime News Network's Theron Martin said the manga has "strong storytelling which carries good emotional appeal, fleshes out the original anime" but said it "unnecessarily adds on to the ending", and that "character designs were not Shinkai's strong point, and Sahara's are only a slight improvement".