Over the July 4th holiday, there was a one-day showing of Uchiage Hanabi, directed by Shinbo Akiyuki and originally released in Japan in August 2017. The storyline includes a seaside location, summer romance, and time travel, all elements that pique my excitement when watching an anime movie.
Shimada Norimichi and his friend Yusuke are on pool cleaning duty where they encounter Oikawa Nazuna sunbathing by the pool. Both have a crush on her, and after she challenges them to a 50 meter race (she is on the swimming team), she invites the winner Yusuke to go watch the fireworks that evening with her. As fate would have it, Nazuna ends up with Norimichi that evening, and he discovers that she is being forced to move away and is determined to run away from home and elope with Norimichi instead. When her mother interrupts their conversation and drags her screaming daughter away, Nazuna drops her suitcase and a mysterious glass marble that she had found in the ocean earlier in the day. Norimichi watches helplessly as Nazuna calls for help, and after she is gone, he hurls the marble in frustration. This action causes a time shift, and Norimichi finds himself once again at the pool in a position to make changes to the timeline.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
The various cycles through time keep moving forward, so it’s not painfully repetitious to watch, especially with the beautiful scenery and the bright sunlight typical of the Sanyō region along the Seto Naikai. The character designs and tight focus on eyes are classic Shinbo, and I nearly groaned when Nazuna exhibited the Shaft head tilt in the opening scene. The movie has the normal dose of the usual schoolboy lecherousness, but other than the guy sitting next to me laughing loudly at these juvenile hijinks, it was not overly annoying. Some things that were probably meant to be subtle features were so obvious that I wasn’t sure how to react to them. For example, the resetting of the timeline clearly allows new possibilities to be reopened, and the “what if” theme was present in the filaments of a light bulb that glowed each time the marble was activated, and in the town’s name of Moshimo that is the Japanese word for “if.”
The anime was pleasant to watch and has nothing to complain about from a visual standpoint. But in the short 90 minute length, there wasn’t enough time to develop the characters or their relationships enough, and I left feeling something was lacking. I would recommend watching it, but don’t expect greatness. I would rate it 3/5.
https://youtu.be/KG770hOuT2k
Show Posts
