Summer: Inaka no Seikatsu

Summer: Inaka no Seikatsu was not the enjoyable offbrand that I hoped it would be. While it had a few positive elements about it the overall experience was incredibly mediocre.

Plot and structure: Protagonist-kun is called to the country by his relatives to look after Hazuki for the summer, who has been left alone in the house. And ultimately that's as far as the plot goes because the pacing of the episode is so ridiculously fast and abrupt that all we get afterwards is a speedrun of sex scenes. One second our character's are on the couch watching TV and the next Hazuki is upstairs masturbating ... in her bedroom while Protag-kun is watching. How did we get here? This wouldn't be an issue if the transitions were just a little smoother between scenes and even during scenes but you won't get that here.

Characters: This offbrand's Protagonist-kun has got to be one of the most boring MCs I have ever seen. He never says a word, only ever grunting or shaking his head (despite the occasional subtitle that makes no sense), which does not do his character any favours. I would much rather have hair-covering-eyes protagonist number 73 instead of this guy as they'd no doubt be much more interesting or at least have some kind of personality. As for Hazuki, she's not much better. While she gets plenty of lines throughout the episode the ridiculous pacing leaves her very little to say outside of the sex scenes. And those lines are either just moans or the typical dialogue you'd hear from any character from any offbrand during these scenes. Despite her quality design she does not stand out in the slightest when compared to other characters from other offbrands.

Animation and art: The character designs, while being nothing new as we've seen them plenty of times before in other offbrands, are well done. The same can be said for the animation, well done but nothing special. There's nothing here that really distinguishes Summer: Inaka no Seikatsu from other shows stylistically but at least the generic animation style the creators went with is decent and nice to look at. If only it flowed better though. The animation quality itself is actually really good - nothing looks like a Queen Bee slideshow in this show - but the transitions between scenes and even during scenes as mentioned before were terrible. If they had just added a few more shots and keyframes between their jump cuts then there's be far less issue, or even just some better transition effects like a slower fadeout instead of just non-stop jump cuts and cuts to black. Oh well, at least the scenes themselves ain't too shabby.

Sound design: There was a lot to be desired here. I've already talked about Protag-kun's near nonexistent voice acting, but couple that with the lack of music or other background noise and it made for an extremely dull end result. Sure there were cicadas in the background which gave some much needed life to the world but this did very little to improve things given how common they are in other projects. It's just white noise at this point. Hazuki's voice acting was fine, until the lack of music and Protag-kun dialogue to work off made her copy paste moans all the more repetitive. Very little variety that makes it difficult to engage and immerse yourself into the story. And the pacing doesn't help much here either. Can you tell how much I hate the pacing in this OVA?

Summary: I know I have said a lot of bad things about this show but that doesn't mean that it's awful. Like mentioned before the animation is decent, the character designs are well done and the scenes that a large number of you clicked to watch won't disappoint. However the weak points in this show just drag it down too much. Boring characters, dull sound, generic art and terrible pacing make it extremely hard to recommend this offbrand. Maybe things will get better when we get more episodes (whenever that's gonna happen) but as of right now, this show gets a 4/10. Not terrible, just incredibly mediocre. I'm gonna go watch Imaizumin Chi wa Douyara Gal no Tamariba ni Natteru Rashii again.