Nobody Knows was really a 90 minute film drawn out over 2 hours. The problem with the second act is that you know something bad is going to happen at the climax -- although it was much worse in real life -- and while building towards that climax, Kore-eda waits and waits, taking Akira through the same experiences over and over again. That may work rhythmically, but nothing that happens in the second half of act two adds to the emotional life of the film. We've already seen and felt what Kore-eda details. "Small" films like Nobody Knows are the hardest films to write; Kore-eda had a great small film in there, but he belabours some of his points & if you'd been in the cinema that I was in, you would've been disappointed at the reaction to the film. People weren't moved like they should've been. I LOVED Nobody Knows, but what you need to remember is that audiences are quick to sympathise with characters and they DID sympathise with Akira, but somewhere along the way they lost their empathy for him & I think it happened in the middle, where Kore-eda told them for the umpteenth time that a) Akira just wanted to be a normal boy, enjoying a normal childhood and b) he wasn't coping with the adult pressures on him. For most filmgoers, B (or rather the progression of B through to the climax) is more important than A.