“An adolescent romantic comedy” the winter 2012 preview charts proclaimed. The picture prominently featured a large breasted red-headed school girl with glasses. Animation studio: J.C. Staff. If you can’t tell already, I wasn’t exactly majorly hyped for this. Everything so far sounded bland, generic and uninteresting. I actually passed over this initially, just because nothing made it sound good.
But then the staff listing came in: the writer was Kuroda Yousuke, known for writing Onegai Teacher (this will be an important point later); the character artist was Uon Taraku, who had done the character art on the Onegai franchise as well as Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (aka Ano Hana); and best of all, Tatsuyuki Nagai as director, who also directed Ano Hana. So the staff lineup was frankly excellent. Ano Hana was easily one of my absolute favourites of 2011 – it got 10/10 from me. So I was now excited to say the least. But cautious, nonetheless – just because the staffing is good doesn’t mean the result won’t be awful (see: Guilty Crown). So how does Ano Natsu de Matteru measure up?
We start with our main character, Kaito, filming outside with a film-based small hand-held camera. And then a UFO kinda crash lands on him? And as he’s about to die a hand comes down and grabs him and next thing he knows he’s falling out of bed. He goes to school, but not before we find out that his sister is going to be working abroad for a few months and is leaving later today and since their parents passed away some time ago he’s going to be on his own for the summer. Hmm. We then get introduced to the main cast of characters, particularly Ichika who is basically said (it’s not a surprise at all so don’t act like this is a spoiler) to be the pilot of the UFO that crash landed, and so naturally she’s transferred into the school for Reasons. She doesn’t let anybody know about this instead opting to say she’s studying from abroad, the gang decides to spend the summer making a small film, and on the way home Kaito learns that Ichika has no place to stay and so he invites her to stay at his house. She bathes and a lot of totally expected stuff happens and it’s all a bit pedestrian. However, Kaito suffers from some weird effect as a result of having come into contact with the ship (he gets a load of strange marks over his neck) and so in order to save him Ichika (fresh out of the bath) transfers some genetic material (or something?) from her mouth to his, and then of course his sister and Kanna (his friend whom is crushing on him something fierce) walk in.
Oh dear.
It seems that all my fears about the tone and style of this show have been confirmed. And I was honestly disappointed because I mean Ano Hana director! Aaaaaah.
But then something strange and wonderful happened.
The rest of the series happened.
Seriously. Almost immediately after the first episode the series took a great upswing in quality – it took a couple of episodes for it to really get there (never worse than the first episode mind) but it never stopped climbing. I assume the fanservice heavy first episode was simply to hook the otaku crowd and make them buy more BDs which happens far too often because business is hella cynical. I won’t even discuss the rest of the episodes because that would involve spoilers and this show really does not deserve being ruined by it, but rest assured: it’s fantastic. All the expectations I had, given that it’s a high school romance, were subverted at each and every turn. Feelings for each other are given far earlier than you’d expect and in ways you wouldn’t expect, they get explored and acted upon again earlier and in ways you wouldn’t expect, and just the whole progression is unexpected and with an excellent pace.
The overarching plot of Ichika being an alien, her attempts to find a location she has a memory of but doesn’t know where it is, and her worries about being caught are handled very well. The romantic aspects of this are integrated quite nicely into this, both in terms of everyone’s actions and reactions. The parallels with the plot of the film they’re making and what Ichika is dealing with are also quite amusing (as are her reactions to organizations like the MiB being mentioned in the plot). And also of course unexpectedly unexpected.
Humour is plentiful and often quite clever. Most of it comes from Lemon, such as the time(s) she managed to get everyone (especially Kanna) drunk and then take pictures of them. Some of it is fairly standard and a little bland – a bit of slapstick, some sex-based (but after the first episode rarely ‘ecchi’), but on the whole pretty good, able to keep the serious stuff separate from the comedy and deftly able to switch between the two as needed.
Many expected Ano Natsu de Matteru to be similar to Ano Natsu because of the director, and I can safely say it’s not. The style of delivery of the story is similar, but the tragedy and catharsis of Ano Hana isn’t present here. It’s emotional, it’s definitely emotional, but it’s more subdued and definitely more upbeat and optimistic. The sweet side of bittersweet for sure. The ending definitely corroborates this, although it is a little odd and you may have mixed feelings on it. I thought it worked very well and carried on the trend of being unexpected, and so I left this series with the biggest smile on my face. Not to say it’s never downbeat or tear-jerking – there are some utterly heartbreaking scenes, and when certain characters don’t get what they want and deserve it affects you. It’s really hard to not empathise with the characters as they are so well-developed and presented.
One aspect that must be mentioned is just how well this captures the feel of summer. It aired in the middle of winter and I felt like I was back home in a field sipping some cheap cider and hanging out with friends as we all slowly got sunburnt. It feels absolutely great, capturing the very best moments of summer. A group of friends just kinda bumming around and doing whatever just for fun, just to make some memories, that’s pretty much the perfect summer. Further, the manner in which they’ve done the lighting – very strong delineations between the light shadow and strong sunlight, rich green foliage and a bright blue sky – all works to make the show look like it constantly has a warm, fresh breeze rolling through. It is absolutely fantastic in this regard, and definitely one of the saving graces of the first episode.
I should mention that the plot is apparently very similar to Onegai Teacher, but having not seen it I can’t really make any comparisons, so I’m taking Ano Natsu de Matteru as it is. And for what it is, it is excellent.
The characters are of course excellent. The romantic feelings between them are generally well-explained and explored, and of course kinda sad as there’s a lot of unrequited love going around. But it’s used for great tension and development, and make for some excellent moments between them. You will undoubtedly care for each of the characters and want the best of them and, if you’re anything like me, will probably end up shouting at the screen as they make poor decisions. It’s nice feeling that involved. For the most part they aren’t anything exceptional, but that’s mostly because their personalities are rather grounded and naturalistic. Not immediately memorable, but their relatability and likability will help work their way into you.
Kaito, as the main character, is a bit standard – kind of oblivious but definitely well-meaning, and also a bit deeper than he’s given credit for (the explanation for the camera late in the series sticks to mind). An all-round pleasant guy. Ichika is not really dissimilar, obviously a little confused about everything because she’s an alien and all, but yeah, lovely in her own way. Kanna is the unfortunate tsundere childhood friend, who’s crushing on Kaito and if you can’t figure it out already she usually ends up with the short end of the stick. She gets some really powerful scenes, and her emotions and hurt are presented quite realistically with a fair bit of nuance. Mio is quiet and meek, crushes on Tetsurou, but comes out of her shell somewhat later on and harbours a deep, dark secret (hint: it’s not deep or dark but it is a bit odd. They could have ruined the character with it but they managed to work it in skilfully enough to feel reasonable). Tetsurou is tall and vaguely sensible, but isn’t honest to himself. Lemon… Lemon is awesome. She provides so much humour, and stirs up so much hilarity, she’s awesome. Confirmed for S-Class troll.
The music is excellent. BGM is great, works well, quality in a kind of standard way. The OP and ED are absolutely fantastic. So enjoyable, so memorable, kind of emotional (not quite “Kimi to natsu no owari” levels, but poignant) and as expected from the director the start of the ED is played over the emotional climax of the episode and we rarely see the full ED animation as a result. It works; it works wonderfully, and doesn’t feel as emotionally manipulative as Ano Hana’s was, but is still kinda. Either way, they’re both brilliant.
The animation is generally pretty good. A fair amount of subtlety in the facial expression, no obvious quality, that wonderful character style, it’s what you’d expect. However, it is animated by J.C. Staff, so it appears to have been done a horrible disservice and produced at a seemingly sub-720p resolution! Just compare it to Ano Hana which is drawn exactly the same but not produced by terrible people:
Yeah. Fuck’s sake J.C. Staff. Why would you do that oh wait they do it to every show and they were doing like 6 shows in the same season augh. Such a waste. Oh well. Doesn’t look terrible, just really blurry – the scenery is really nice, as detailed as the production allows, and the colors overall are vibrant but a little subdued so they don’t become overwhelmingly bright.
Ano Natsu de Matteru was without a doubt the biggest surprise of the winter season. The way it initially presented itself was horribly generic and simply designed to appeal to the tedious side of the otaku demographic, but after that it just became so much better, in every way. So good that it was my favorite show of the winter season (that didn’t start airing in fall). Ano Natsu de Matteru is a fantastic romantic comedy that knows when to be which, and despite its auspicious start is entirely worth your time.
9/10
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