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New Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning
by Luis Reyes  
New Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning box
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synopsis

Kyosuke Kasuga is awakened by a telephone call from himself warning about a car. Moments later, on his way to class, Kyosuke is struck by a car and hurled forward into time. He rises from the ground three years later, although he has remained nineteen, to a world transformed. His girlfriend, Madoka, has opened her house to another man. His childhood playmate Hikaru (who had a crush on him growing up) is now a dancer in New York and is back in Tokyo for an important audition. And the Kyosuke of this time has become a photojournalist whose gone missing on assignment in Bosnia. His grandfather reveals that a kind of mysticism runs through the family line, but while the old man works on a way to send Kyosuke back to 1991, the youth must deal with the emotional issues of 1994 -- his now adult love for Madoka, Hikaru's now adult crush on him, and the paradoxical jealousy he feels for himself.

review
Screenwriter Kenji Terada and director Kunihiko Yuyama begin this abnormal tale of youthful love (with a mystical twist) extremely strong. The changes in Kyosuke's life come into sharper focus under Terada's lens of fantasy, and the sexual dynamics between he and Madoka -- and, for that matter, he and Hikaru -- ring truer than in most anime love triangles.

But as the film progresses, what starts as an earnest examination of youthful love descends into the kind of cheek-blushing, sappy, pregnant pause-ridden teen angst more familiar to the medium. The tide of blue-ball anxiety and pop-idol aspirations washes away the delicate narrative framework Terada establishes in the first few minutes of the film. In floods such ripe, cornball clichés of the "if you love someone, set them free," "people change," and, my personal favorite, "I never meant to hurt you" variety.

Fortunately, Grandfather chimes in very seldom with explanations of the magic involved -- Yuyama allows the story to run along the emotional growth of its characters in response to the mystical elements rather than to indulge cheesy technical babble about how Kyosuke's time travel is possible. Unfortunately, the romantic story that steals focus from the film's science fiction conceit surrenders to nostalgia and retrospection, providing Kyosuke with little forward momentum. Madoka loves him regardless, Hikaru loves him regardless, he's never tested, he's never faced with obstacle, he never has to come to any important realization to re-assemble the tapestry of time.

But, perhaps, that is another kind of charm for the piece -- it moves like a portrait, something that is unchanging and permanent even though it may give the illusion of movement; something packed with emotional tension without resolution; something perfect for a lazy, rainy afternoon when self-pity and ice cream top the agenda.



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