Review | The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes movie review: Japanese animated teen romance tackles grief, abandonment and self-doubt
3/5 stars
Would you sacrifice the time you have in the present in order to recapture something lost from your past? The discovery by a pair of melancholy teenagers of a magical tunnel poses precisely this quandary in Tomohisa Taguchi’s new animated feature film The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes.
Adapted from the award-winning light novel by Mei Hachimoku, this beautifully realised tale of first love and adolescent angst achieves an emotional maturity through its weighty themes of grief, abandonment and self-doubt. While it clocks in at a brisk 83 minutes, Taguchi never feels rushed in his execution.
Set in 2005, in a small rural town, the story opens with a chance meeting at an isolated railway station between timid high-schooler Kaoru Tono (voiced by Oji Suzuka) and Anzu Hanashiro (Marie Iitoyo), a brash girl from the city.
Although initially cold and reluctant to make conversation, Anzu slowly warms to Kaoru and they exchange numbers. This takes on greater meaning when they learn that they are to be classmates, yet Anzu shows no interest whatsoever in making friends with the other students.
On the way home, Kaoru stumbles across a tunnel in the woods beside the railway tracks. He ventures inside to discover a brightly lit and seemingly endless cavern, but on exiting, finds that Anzu has followed him; she informs him that he has been gone for hours.
The pair agree to investigate this bizarre anomaly further and deduce that seconds spent inside the tunnel translate to hours lost in the real world. When Kaoru finds a shoe belonging to his dead little sister, as well as a budgie that they taught to sing, the tunnel’s full potential begins to become apparent.
Despite its unwieldy and cumbersome title, the film presents its absorbing premise with an almost ruthless efficiency. Taguchi’s adaptation of Hachimoku’s novel strips away numerous subplots and leaves many of its supporting characters undeveloped as it hones in on the burgeoning romance between these two damaged young souls.
Most interesting is how the magical gift they uncover impacts them from opposite ends: Kaoru yearns to revive his sister at any cost, while Anzu’s crippling lack of confidence sees her tempted by the tunnel’s allure of escape.
The simplicity of the film’s narrative and the unhurried pacing of its execution may challenge some viewers, but these qualities play into its overarching message of embracing the present and treasuring what little time we are afforded to live our lives.
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