I ‘m a HUGE Mei Nagano fan, and as some of you know well, have been dying to watch this movie ever since it came out late last year. With the online release of it this past month, I was crossing my fingers that some blessed subtitling team would pick it up, and just today I was overjoyed to find that a translating team picked it up and released subs for it!!!
WELL, I wasted no time sitting down to watch it, and I say without reservation that I loved, loved, LOVED it!!! I had always known the briefest of plot details: That Satomi Ishihara played a mother with a young girl who hopped from husband to husband dragging her child along, but I had no idea that that would be only the mere tip of the iceberg of what a rich, detailed and lovingly crafted story Baton truly was!
Half of the story follows the seemingly scatterbrained and flighty Mom Rika (Ishihara) as she gushes and coos her way through several relationships with her young daughter in tow...
...while the other half of the movie follows a shy and reserved schoolgirl named Yuko (Nagano) living with her Father (Kei Tanaka) as she approaches graduation as well as her very first romance with a boy named Kento (Kenshi Okada). 
By the third act the two points converge and you finally get the whole picture of the colorful, never-boring and always fantastic life a girl has lived because of her Mother’s true love.
I simply adored this movie and was kept quite intrigued throughout the show by its little twists and turns, surprises and reveals, and though perhaps the ending might be somewhat predictable, I found the entire story to be wonderfully wholesome and sweet as any I've seen in years!
DEFinitely an A+ from me!!!!