[REVIEW] End of Summer
Ryan Mathews
Well, someone's gotta admit they buy this stuff. :-) Seriously, though, I
was a bit disappointed with END OF SUMMER, due partly to it not living up to
the hype AD Vision threw around at Anime Expo.
Thar be spoilers here:
END OF SUMMER is what AD Vision said it was at their panel: a high-school
slice-of-life romance with a couple of sex scenes included. It is not what the
case cover or magazine ad makes it out to be, something close to Cream Lemon.
The sex scenes, although long and detailed, are much less important than the
story itself, and afterward it seemed in retrospect that they got in the way.
The story is not so much a straight-line plot as it is just the following around
of a boy (who name escapes me, dammit) during summer vacation. The main thrust
of the plot involves his attempts to get a date with Mai, an attractive member
of the high school swim team. However, there are numerous subplots that take up
just as much time, and curiously, one of the subplots involving a female friend,
Sayoko, and his comforting of her after her boyfriend breaks up with her, takes
over as the main plot by the end. The anime finishes with the resolution of
this plot and leaves the Mai plot hanging!
That's the one thing that annoyed me the most: this felt like the first episode
of a series, not a stand-alone OAV. The last we see of Mai is her being driven
away by her swimming coach, looking back at the hero with an expression of
despair on her face. There are also two other subplots, involving an immature
girl with a crush on the boy, and the splitting-up of the boy's best friend with
his girlfriend, none of which are resolved.
As for the animation, it wasn't bad, but I can easily find better. You get
annoyed with the sex scenes and their use of the same 8 frames over and over
to create "rhythm".
In short, this OAV was enjoyable enough that I didn't feel ripped off, but it
certainly wasn't the masterpiece AD Vision promoted it as.
---------- Ryan Mathews
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Elizabeth Horn
>
>Well, someone's gotta admit they buy this stuff. :-) Seriously, though, I
>was a bit disappointed with END OF SUMMER, due partly to it not living up to
>the hype AD Vision threw around at Anime Expo.
You said "up," huh-huh-huh-huh...
I got the impression from Matt that his ad copy is written to sell a
new and mysterious genre to the American public. As long as the
product itself is cool, I have no reservations about going all out in
promoting it. I was going to begin my review of it with some wise-ass
comments about the cover hype, saying that if A.D. Vision hasn't quite
reached the William Faulkner stage yet, they're at least giving
Erskine Caldwell a run for his money. But I began to see what he was
getting at: the idea of making a story like "End Of Summer" in
animation *would* be revolutionary and shocking to the average
American. I agree with you that it would have been better if "End Of
Summer" was a continuing series, but I found it good as a
stand-alone. I hope it represents a continuing diversity on the part
of A.D. Vision.
--Carl "Shut up, Beavis! That's not how it goes!" Horn