It is now clear that for Japanese animation there is a pre- and a post-Makoto Shinkai. The author of the very famous Your Name has evidently channeled the attention of the Japanese industry on romance hybridized by fantasy and soft sci-fi; he became the custodian of a new way of conceiving it shojoraising it – even in reference to mere numbers – above any categorization and targeting, is a paradigmatic model for a sentimental genre definitively revived (and universalized) by the intuition of the wonderful graftof the dream-supernatural transplant.
And it fits precisely into this groove Tunnel to the Summer, the Exit of Goodbyesfilm in theaters from 10 to 12 June with Anime Factory.
In the name of Makoto Shinkai
In short, Makoto Shinkai has become the forerunner of a real current that seems to have monopolized the medium in its cinematographic distribution: beyond the films based on successful works which already enjoy an important base of fans (such as the latest Haikyu !! – Battle to the last refusal, of which we invite you to read our review), bringing Japanese animation to theaters is often a product of this sort of “Makoto Shinkai-wave” which has found some over the years notable exponent (above all Mamoru Hosoda and Mari Okada) and many forgettable followers.
The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes, which arrives in Italian cinemas thanks to Plaion Pictures and Anime Factoryfits right between the two vertices, leaning more towards conscious and authentic imitation and avoiding the risk of copying without art or part.
The love story is that between Tono Kaoru and Hanashiro Anzu, the fantastic element is a portal that legend claims can grant the wishes of those who access it in exchange for one hundred years of life. Hanashiro arrives in the village of Kaoru in conjunction with the young man’s discovery of the elusive Urashima Tunnel, both want to test its effects, both guard a desire that can no longer remain dormant: Hanashiro wants to receive the talent that she is convinced she does not possess, Kaoru is determined to do anything to bring his little sister Karen back to life.
The feature film directed by Tomohisa Taguchi is a derivative work, it knows it is and is not afraid of comparison. There is the school setting, there is the city girl who abandons a metropolis that cannot accommodate the fantastic (and an educational distance with the protagonist which here does not translate into an irreconcilability of visions), there is the time as a primary coordinate and summer as suspension, as heterochrony. There is, again, particular attention to background and environmental noises and a character design which does not differ much from that of the archetypal Your Name (Kaoru and Hanashiro designed by Tomomi Yabuki resemble Taki and Mitsuha).
Here the ethereal, extradimensional place – the Urashima Tunnel -, both a utopian reflection of the protagonists’ interiority and a locus amoenus of regrets, abandons the calamitous essence of its models and becomes intimate window on the wounds and shortcomings of Kaoru and Hanashirocovering itself with an intrinsic ambiguity that from the beginning alerts us to the results of its crossing, to the dangers of an alchemical compensation which combines its nature as a viable “genie’s lamp” with the collateral effects of a temporal misalignment capable of alarming subtly and arouse curiosity.
Resist time and yourself
It is in this emphasis on time and its fruits that The Tunnel of Summer finds its thematic compactness. Time becomes a guardian of distances, an examiner for an imperishable love that undermines the elements, an artefact to be given as a gift, a flow to be resisted to escape anonymity. And the centrality of the telephone as a means of communication – with Kaoru and Hanashiro using it repeatedly to keep in touch and to investigate the functioning of the tunnel – is not accidental: the cell phone is both instantaneity and waste; a timeless medium in its being a digital evolution of the letter, of the permanent text, punctual in the possibility of minimizing the lag between sending and receiving.
AND never as in The Tunnel of Summer does it become an evocative instrumentcapable of transcending the coldness of visually codified and depersonalized messages and leaving the reconstruction of the moment in which it is typed to the imagination (a device that contributes to making the final lines of the film poignant).
In the character of Hanashiro and in the bond with his mangaka grandfather, Taguchi carves out a space for a metanarrative reflection on the industry and on the unflattering consideration that society reserves for cartoonists, then entrusting the co-protagonist with the task of raising awareness of self-esteem, of inviting people to believe in their potential, to avoid hypercriticism and move away from the harmful idealization of “being special” .
The Tunnel of Summer however, it gives its best in a treatment of a love story which, although it does not ignore (and does not want to do so) visual and narrative clichés, is extremely effective in staging a gradual approach, never uselessly reaching out towards the apple tree at all costs, a cautious approximation given the frankness and evasiveness of the impenetrable Hanashiro and the permanent grayness of Kaoru, for a love that smolders behind the experience , which blossoms in lack and in the awareness of loss.
A love that becomes, first of all, a driving and revealing forcean impulse to move forward for those who refuse to start over, an aid in the mourning process, another main theme of The Tunnel of Summer, which in that “exit of goodbyes” of the title reveals that it is nothing but goodbyes and the ability to accept them, to look away from a past that we cling to with desperation, to loosen our grip and reevaluate the present and its contents.
Clap Animation’s film is then supported by a rhythm and textbook writingwhich surprises even more because it overcomes the obstacles of stereotyping by infusing dramatic moments with the right intensity, and a technical sector which, despite not reaching the heights of the CoMix Wave Films productions, manages to replicate that magical realism which permeates the narrative, to make atmospheric changes expressive, between incessant rain and clear skies, then illuminated in the summer darkness by the bright colors of fireworks and filled with the foolish ones of a world beyond time.
