Ranked #3263

_Summer

In confession - what usually catches my first glance when selecting Anime to watch is the title. and "_Summer" was such a unique title, I simply had to watch it - given it was only two episodes, as well. Being Swedish, at first I had some heck of a hard time understanding the alternate title "Underbar Summer", with "underbar" meaning "wonderful" in my language, until my slow brain realized that it was referring to the "_" in front of the title. -_-; "Huh, is the alternate title in German or something?"


If you're into Ecchi, then it's watchable. If you're not, there's not really much else to gather from here. As others have already told, it ends too soon; it's a good setup for a harem kind of anime, and had it drawn on for some ten episodes more, I'm positive it would've gotten much more enjoyable, not to mention acquired much more recognition. But...

STORYLINE
"Storyline"? Hahahaha. It's a setup for a storyline, and not much more. The rest is up for us to guess, I suppose.

ART
No complaints here, though. Although I'm weak for these kinds of things - very few new shows have such art that I'd call "horrible" or even "bad". The animation is as neat as expected from Anime shows.

SOUND
My only quirk is with the lead blond girl sounding just a tad whiny. Otherwise, the voices are fine, the music is fine. The opening theme is pretty; the opening theme carries a lot of weight, since it's supposed to introduce the series in a fair way, and I think it did a good job.

CHARACTER
You have most of the stereotypes here. Quiet, pretty girl; energetic tomboy; silent, emotionless girl; perky little sister. And of course, the annoying sidekick guy who knows twenty times more about picking up girls than the lead character, but still never gets hooked up. Ever. So hey...

ENJOYMENT
There are some half-naked sceneries, including the classical "outdoors bath" where the guys peek at the girls and the girls throw things at the guys. There are also hints at relationships, but they are oh so subtle and never progressed in the actual show. That's the enjoyment I got from it.

OVERALL
So as said...if you can't find anything else to kill time with, then by all means, I'm not one to stop you. It's only two episodes after all, and then you have another "completed watching" series that you can brag about. ;P Sure, I've seen better shows, but granted, I've seen worse ones as well. read more

If you'd like to waste 60 minutes of your time, watch _summer. It's not even that it was that awful. In all honesty, there was just no point to it. The ending is just outrageously unsatisfying. They introduce you to some characters, hint at some chemistry between a few of them, then end it with a weak attempt at a moral message. After watching episode two, the first thing that came to mind was "Alright, where's episode 3?" It was as if they decided to simply not conclude it, for the sake of making me angry.

Aside from that, everything else was fine. Characters designs were satisfactory, albeit a little stale. Animation was a little bad for an OVA, but whatever. Music wasn't particularly remarkable but it certainly didn't detract from the experience (although I have listened to musical works with a little bit more depth).

If the story had a definite ending with a little spark of drama (to say the least), it certainly would've been an enjoyable experience. However, due its lack of a clear conclusion, I recommend watching something else. read more