Umibe no Étranger (The Stranger by the Shore)

Shun Hashimoto is an openly gay aspiring novelist living in Okinawa who was abandoned by his parents after coming out to them. Mio Chibana is a reserved, orphaned high school student, often found spending his time by the sea. One day, the two meet on the beach, and Shun is instantly captivated by Mio. The days fly by as they slowly begin to grow closer until Mio suddenly announces that he has to leave for the mainland.

Three years pass before a 20-year-old Mio returns to Okinawa to confess his love to Shun. However, in those three years, Shun's life has changed. Will he be able to accept Mio's feelings and make such a commitment?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Episode 1

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Umibe no Étranger

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Characters & Voice Actors

Chibana, Mio

Main

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu
Japanese

Hashimoto, Shun

Main

Murata, Taishi
Japanese

Eri

Supporting

Itou, Kanae
Japanese

Suzu

Supporting

Nakaya, Sayaka
Japanese

Sakurako

Supporting

Shimamura, Yuu
Japanese

Oba-chan

Supporting

Satou, Hana
Japanese

Mio's Mother

Supporting

Inagawa, Eri
Japanese

Shun's Dad

Supporting

Sakaki, Kousuke
Japanese

Mimi Mama

Supporting

Tachibana, Tatsumaru
Japanese

Shun's Mom

Supporting

Takeuchi, Emiko
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Herek, Samantha

Assistant Producer

Oohashi, Akiyo

Director, Storyboard, Screenplay

Fujita, Akiko

Sound Director

MONO NO AWARE

Theme Song Performance

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Ending Theme

"Zokkon (ゾッコン)" by MONO NO AWARE

Reviews

Feb 27, 2021

Jellyf

Recommended

The setting of Umibe no Étranger has always held me in a vice-grip. An island surrounded by the blue ocean, the residents are dressed in billowy clothing. The flowers are bright and blooming. It is the essence of summer. It's the place which you read in a book and then proceed to ache for. Or rather, in this case, the place which you see in a manga and then proceed to ache for. This overwhelming feeling of being in the moment presents itself perfectly (thank you, Kanna Kii), so much so, that you want to be living through it instead. I believe the best media ... shows itself in whether or not the viewers wish they could be a part of the story.

Mio and Shun contrast each other. Shun is a quiet novelist who, despite having known his sexuality before Mio, still hasn't come to terms with it. Mio on the other hand is young, carefree, and is comfortable with openly confessing his love to Shun. They balance each other out. Mio learns from Shun's family situation, while Shun learns from Mio that he shouldn't be embarrassed about their love. There is nothing wrong with expressing feelings for someone of the same gender or sex. And Shun, having lived his life with this affecting him, comes to terms for the first time, that, this is how he is, and that's perfectly okay.

I will admit that the pacing of Umibe no Étranger is rather fast. The pacing is the weakest part of both the anime adaptation and the original manga. Before you know it, it's over. This may have faired better pacing-wise if it had been split up into a four-part OVA.

The art. I'll just say it. It's great. They did Kanna Kii's style justice. The animation is smooth, the backgrounds and coloring are beautiful. There is nothing to nitpick. It's above average, probably even ABOVE above average. Studio Hibari did a wonderful job.

Now, for what I am head over heels for - the sound (by Eiko Morikawa) and original music (composed by Mina Kubota). None of the sound effects felt out of place - the blowing wind and stretching sea made the setting even more immersive. And what takes the cake is the music. Beautiful piano pieces, that, whenever they started playing during a scene I would focus on them instead because I didn't expect them to be so... good. Mina Kubota did an amazing job with the music. The ending song is equally addicting; it is all I imagined a song representing Mio and Shun to be. This attitude also goes towards the voice actors, who did a great job with bringing these two to life (along with Sakurako, Eri, Suzu, and most particularly a young version of Mio, who actually had a child voice acting him).

Umibe no Étranger is a story that bases itself around coming to terms with who you are and your situation. It is a story about growing up and basking in pure first love. The animation, sound, music, and setting all bring this movie together. And albeit it may be a little fast-paced, it surely is a diamond in the rough.

Also, it has cats.

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Dec 31, 2021

abystoma2

Mixed Feelings

BL is a genre with very, very low standards. I’d say that the only genre that’s worse off in that regard may be shows for kids, and even that is debatable. So, once in a blue moon a BL anime that isn’t utterly terrible is released, and just by the virtue of not being completely garbage it gets praised as the best thing ever. And to be fair, in comparison with most of other similar works, it’s pretty good. In comparison to regular anime though… that’s a different matter.

First, the good part. The visuals are gorgeous. This movie is very nice to look at, and ... especially the backgrounds are aesthetically pleasing. In this aspect, the production value is high, which is the opposite of average BL product. To give credit when it’s due, I have no complains about this part. Maybe the only downside being that this is the only interesting thing about the whole movie. It almost tempt me to give it a higher score, but unfortunately rest of it is still dragging the enjoyment down.

The story is… chaotic. It feels like watching a digest of a series you have never seen. The characters are poorly introduced, it’s riddled with confusing cuts that seem to just skip over huge portions of would-be story, and has timeskips without warning that make it even more confusing. We are given no reason as to why should we care about the characters at all – unless of course you are a fujoshi, in which case the usual procedure would be to get hyped about boy’s love and disregard everything else, no further characterisation is required. Ultimately the story, or at least what I could catch from it, adds up to about an average shounen-ai plotline about dude liking a dude while some people are not fully okay with that. Nothing groundbreaking. I have not read the original work yet, so I don’t know if it too is as rushed as the movie, but guessing based on the fact that it is only one volume long, the adaptation probably didn’t left out much things.

There is one part where the story finally stays at one place for a longer time and finally starts giving out a bit more coherent storytelling and even a somehow interesting source of conflict which again tempted me to at least give this a 6/10, alas it makes up only about fifth of the runtime and the movie still feels like a very long trailer than an actual movie.

As hinted at the start, this is actually very good for its genre, but that is really saying more about the awful state of the genre than the quality of this movie. It is nice that it’s not so creepy and rapey as “classics" such as Sekaiichi Hatsukoi or Loveless. It’s nice it has animation that doesn’t look like a deviantart user was made to be in charge of the storyboard. But, that doesn’t make it great, that just means it passed the mark of not being terrible. Still, for fans of the genre I would recommend it. For others – well, as I mentioned, at least it looks

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Mar 3, 2021

delta5

Not Recommended

Why am I giving such a low score to a movie that so many people love? It's pretty simple: If you have't already read the source material this whole thing is going to be incoherent. Very little is fleshed out or explained, there's a huge time skip, and no relationships are defined at all. I'm syre that this is satisfying fan service for those who read the series, but if you're judging it as a stand-alone anime project it fails completely.

The animation is nice enough and everything else is of good quality, but I can't recommend this if you're anime only like me. It's just ...

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Poll: Umibe no Étranger Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 ) FuMomo-kun - Mar 6, 2021	73 replies	by UserZ022 »» Apr 4, 11:30 AM
Idk about you but I NEED A SECOUND MOVIE LukeLippo - May 7, 2021	8 replies	by passing_through »» Dec 13, 2023 10:07 AM
Why is this rated PG-13 if it has an explicit sex scene? kari-ya - Sep 7, 2021	19 replies	by Puppytay »» Aug 14, 2023 9:12 AM
I have a big doubt about Sakurako flashback :O orlianime93 - Apr 11, 2022	8 replies	by gulgamgug »» Jun 23, 2022 10:27 PM
Happy birthday chibana Mio Sekainobaka - Dec 24, 2021	1 replies	by cnsqwerty »» Dec 27, 2021 9:25 PM

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Eri

Suzu

Sakurako

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Umibe no Étranger

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