New Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning

A Japanese animated film. Kyosuke is at university now. Years have passed since the series. He wants to be a photographer. He is thinking of working as a correspondent in a war zone. He is with Madoka. The two chose each other at the end of school. The relationship is not going well. Kyosuke does not know what to do and does not talk. His family has a peculiarity. All of them carry supernatural abilities; teleportation, going back in time, telekinesis. Kyosuke has not used his for years. One day there is an accident. He cannot control the ability and sends himself somewhere. From there the film is a story of being lost. Kyosuke falls into the past. The year is the 1970s. Before he was born. He meets a girl there. She is his own age and does not know him. Then he understands: the girl is his mother. The narrative does not build this as a joke. There is another matter. Hikari, the third of the trio, is at the edge of the narrative as though on a separate line. What the narrative is interested in is not science fiction but return: its idea is that Kyosuke does not know whether he wants to go back, and that staying is also an option. The tone is far darker than the series. The series was a youth comedy; this film is not. The narrative does not resolve the relationship easily and leaves Madoka as someone waiting. That caused argument among the series' followers. The running time is a little over seventy minutes. The animation is handmade and at the standard of the period. The source is Izumi Matsumoto's manga; the narrative follows not the manga but a novel written later. Kunihiko Yuyama directed. Toru Furuya, Eriko Hara and Hiromi Tsuru are in the voice cast. Who it is for: anyone who watched the series and is curious about sequel films to 1980s anime. Who it is not for: anyone who does not know it; the narrative introduces no character and the history of the relationships is never explained.