Shinkai made the film to help a romantic interest overcome a difficult situation, and his time living in a small apartment defined the scenario.

After completing the work, Shinkai himself distributed the film via CD-R format and mail, selling 5,000 copies at anime conventions.

The work was well received, winning the 2000 DoGA CG Animation Contest and attracting CoMix Wave Films' interest.

[6] He aimed to transmit the feelings of "the vague loneliness of living", "slight pain" and "modest warmth", and as he thought it would be difficult to do it through words he did it through images and sound.

[10] It received critical acclaim,[11] and won the grand prize at the 2000 DoGA CG Animation Contest.

[10] Anime's authors Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc called it "simple, underplayed and just a little maudlin".

[12] In a 2017 retrospective, Anne Lauenroth of Anime News Network ranked it Shinkai's ninth best work (out of 11), praising its use of lighting that gives "a modest beauty" to the scenery and its "carefully placed details" that transmits the wholeness of a world only partially presented.

[5] At first he received "a very long e-mail" from the company in which there was a review telling why they appreciated the work and he was subsequently hired.

[17] An anime television adaptation, subtitled Everything Flows, was first announced in January 2016 through the February issue of Kadokawa Shoten's Newtype magazine.

It aired between March 4 and 25, 2016 as part of Tokyo MX's Ultra Super Anime Time programming block.

[24][25] On May 26, 2020, the anime was released in Blu-ray in the United States by Discotek Media with English subtitles and a new dub.

[30] In January 2017, Vertical licensed the series,[30] and it released the manga in the North American market on August 1 of that year.