Ano Natsu de Matteru–First Episode Review

Episode Summary: Kirishima Kaito is out late one night testing the high-speed functions on his new video camera, when a bright light drops from the sky and he's knocked backwards into the watery depths below. He vaguely recalls a woman's hand reaching for his own, but when he wakes up the next morning it's as if nothing has happened. At school the next day, Kaito and his classmates are joined by a new transfer student, a red-haired girl named Takatsuki Ichika. Ichika is a bit awkward and unsure of herself, but soon falls in with Kaito and his crowd when they decide to use their Summer break to film a movie.

Kaito can't shake the feeling that something isn't quite right; while at the pool, his friends notice a wound on his neck that he doesn't remember receiving. Things get even stranger when Kaito sees Ichika by the river fishing; it turns out that she has nowhere to stay, and after some internal deliberation, he invites her to stay at his house. Kaito's wound suddenly gets worse and Ichika reveals her true colors just in time for Kaito's sister to arrive.

Thoughts: It's been a couple of seasons since we've all been subjected to an entry from the "magical girlfriend from space" genre, so I thought that I'd tear the band-aid off and get to it as soon as I could. Though I'm no big fan of series whose central hook is the fact that a hot girl drops in to give some average schmuck a good time, this episode manages to hit all the same bases while still being tolerable. It doesn't seem like it will be an out-of-the-park home run, but this series doesn't stoop to the deeper, murky lows that have defined some of the trashiest teen-focused romance anime of late.

One major difference between this and some of its contemporaries is that the small amount of fanservice that exists is somehow in slightly better taste than the majority of what crops up in your average ecchi series. I'll be the first person to say that I have never, except in the very rarest of cases, thought that fanservice adds anything to a series or serves as a necessary component; most of the time it's the only way a dumpy show can hope to attract a meager audience, though strangely-enough it's also a way of gender-segregating a show's audience appeal, thus cutting its audience at least in half. I have to grudgingly admit, though, that there are degrees of fanservicey grossness, and this episode is certainly on the milder end. I think that a lot of it has to do with plausibility. There's a predictable scene where Ichika is showering with Kaito right outside the bathroom. Of course she sticks her head out and the young, inexperienced boy gets flustered; to avoid the chance to perpetuate such an obvious gag would probably be too much to expect of most series. There's nothing about the scene, however, that screams "buy the Blu-ray so you can see the uncensored boobies!" because that's not where the camera is focused; all we see is Ichika's face peering out the sliding door. Likewise, Kaito gets a helping of boobs in the face, but the scene framing is very coy and we ultimately don't see much. Don't get me wrong, when Ichika's towel slips and she's forced to hide her nakedness with the closest object, we all know exactly what's going on, but at least she's she's not waving around back-breaking water balloons while her nipples are being hidden by stray beams of light from the magical censorship flood lamp.

This episode feels much more subdued in tone than I would have expected, actually. It does a good job of establishing a very lackadaisical, summery feeling without being heavy-handed about it (for example, the cicada sound-effects are relegated mostly to the background). Another thing that I liked was that there seems to be a sense of constancy to Kaito's group of friends. The progression of their last day of school before break is structured in such a way as to feel very unstructured, by which I mean that the narrative seems much more connected by the group's conversation regarding their potential movie project than it does by how they sit in class and wait for the bell to ring. The way the group of friends gravitates to each-other throughout the day also does a good job of establishing their relationships to one-another without being too blatant about who's the "timid character" or "playboy."

That said, it's still difficult at this point for me to muster much enthusiasm for this show, primarily because I've never really been able to connect with the purported appeal of "magical (or in this case, alien) girlfriend" stories. It's a genre that's so closely tied to male wish-fulfillment that even a well-executed example still feels like an obvious, one-sided fantasy. Even if Kaito isn't a bad guy as far as anime protagonists go and Ichika doesn't seem like a sex toy or a pushover, there's still a palpable undercurrent that betrays the central contrivance again and again. I would like to be able to look past that in a show that deserves it, but I'm not yet convinced that this is that show.

This is a nice-looking anime and though I have several criticisms of it I'm certainly willing to admit that the first episode exceeded my expectations. I don't know yet, though, if this is one of those shows that has a hint of fanservice to rope in the audience or whether it will continue to deteriorate into a full-blown fanservice comedy, so I'm apprehensive of saying anything too enthusiastic about it at this point. It occupies that weird space in-between "I really dislike this" and "I'm recommending this to all of my friends," and it could really go either way at this point. At least I'm not dreading the prospect of watching a couple more episodes.

Pros:

• The first episode does a good job of establishing the level of friendship within Kaito's group of friends and defining them (however simply) as different people.
• Though there's fanservice, it's lacks the sense of outright grossness that defines the excessive nudity of so many recent series.

Cons:

• At its heart, the show seem to be yet another magical-girlfriend wish-fulfillment fantasy of the most average kind.
• The sexy gags are all very predictable.

Recommended? I think I'm going to need another episode or two on this one. There are a lot of times where I can tell right away whether or not an anime is going to be anger-inducing, but this one is a little bit too subtle for that.

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