What is Kimagure Orange Road(KOR)? It was a long running romantic comedy series about a love triangle between a spineless goody-goody male lead, Kyousuke, the alluring high-school delinquent Madoka, and the bright-eyed always cheerful Hikaru. It was a huge hit at the time, not just in Japan, but in many European countries, especially Italy. Despite that, it fell down the memory hole at some point, and all that remained was a small cult following of superfans from back in the day.
It is the most 80s Anime ever created, the opposite of timeless, something totally rooted in 1980s Japan. If you think the 80s died for a reason, this is pure torture. However, there is something very nostalgic about it for me, even though I wasn’t alive back then. 1980s Japan was one of the last times in the West when a generally positive or even utopian attitude about the future was still present, where the future was still possible. With the 90s, the economic recession, and The End of History, all this would die. Of course, the 80s were a pipe dream induced by neoliberalism, but at the time, people really did believe in it.
The series had it all, cheesy, energetic pop music, discos, skateboards, soda cans, aerobics, extravagant outfits, youth gangs, warm summer nights at the beach, skiing trips, totally confident in its decadence. Back when it aired, this was just a reflection of the perceived reality, but today it is a melancholic time capsule. What was then simply anytown is now a very specific setting, the 80s Japanese suburb. I love that each episode ended with a zoom out into a photo. I love the super stylish intros, some of the best in all of Anime. The soundtrack in general is excellent. And I love the character designs and dreamy artwork done by Akemi Takada, like the poster for this movie, she also worked on Patlabor and Urusei Yatsura.
But after all, the 80s did die for a reason, and something that looks awesome in a vaporwave music video might not be as awesome to actually watch. Even if you ignore all the sexism of that period which KOR is full of, the 80s were also a time when Anime could just run forever. Excess was all the rage, and we have all the time in the world, baby.
With 48 episodes KOR was even tame in that regard, Maison Ikkoku lasted 96 episodes, Urusei Yatsura 195 episodes. At some point, the plot in KOR ground to a halt and it lost itself in episodic nothingness. The love triangle became very stale as the same situations are repeated again and again. The series always teased you with some resolution, but never delivered, the status quo was always restored by the end of the episode, no matter how contrived, sometimes with literal magic powers.
Thus, what first appears to be a simple, cute and nostalgic romance about youth and growing up is eventually suffocated in endless filler and shitty pervert comedy. The characters really outstay their welcome after such a long time(I never want to hear “Daaarrrling!” again ), and even when you power through to the end, the central issue remains unresolved.
And this is where the movie “I Want to Return to That Day” comes in. It is the conclusion which was always meant to be, presented with an emotional brutality totally contrary to the easygoing nature of the series. There is nothing cute in this film, nothing funny, no fantastic power to save the day, it’s true to life, and it hurts in the soul. The characters are full of subtle sorrow and display their deepest vulnerabilities. They are pathetic, egoistic, and thus completely human. This film does not hold back, a choice has to be made that will have terrible consequences either way, and these consequences are displayed without mercy. Ultimately, it is a story about accepting that things can’t be the way they were.
While the movie also takes place in the 80s, they are very different from the bubblegum 80s of the series. The music still has a certain cheese factor, but it is much more somber and less energetic. The two songs “I Love You” and “Embrace That Sky” by Kanako Wada, who is a J-Pop singer referenced in the movie itself, are particularly beautiful. Many scenes take place in total silence, always an effective choice.
Shots focus on the fleeting things, ice cream in the summer heat, birds flying away, the direction is placid, allowing us to really soak in the emotional turmoil of the characters, there is an Oshii quality to it. As with many productions of the time, the background art is beautiful and atmospheric, the evening star in the orange sunset sky, nightly cityscapes with the red blinking position lights, lakes shimmering in the sun. I really don’t understand people who call this look dated, do they even have eyes?
This is a film in which relationships start and end, accordingly, there is always some couple in the background of a scene, telephone booths are plastered in pornographic adverts, radio and TV full of romantic advice, when you have a breakup it seems everyone wants to remind you of it.
The most interesting background detail is that we see the ugly side of the achiever society, as if the emotional turmoil our characters and many teenagers go through isn’t enough, it is also the time in their lives when they become firmly embedded in a bureaucratic machine which doesn’t care about them. As one character jokingly remarks “Why do the college entrance exams have to be right when we’re hitting our sexual peaks?”
Madoka and Kyousuke, all grown up, attend a special summer school just to succeed at those exams.
This school is a depressing environment, where you don’t learn for your own sake, but just to pass a test. When Madoka and Kyousuke in one scene quiz each other, all they do is spout historic dates and the events that happened then, a meaningless exercise in memorization. While the cicadas chirp in the summer heat, they lock themselves into their rooms to study, have others bring them food, can’t even attend the town festival. All that will ultimately decide their future are two numbers on a board among hundreds of others.
Hikaru is still in school, but in a similar situation. She wants to be an actor in a school play done by a famous director, and the casting process is analogue to the college entrance exams, anonymizing and merciless. The director seems devoid of any empathy, we never see his face, just that he always taps his hand with the script impatiently. The intense external stress imposed on the characters serves as a backdrop to the internal emotional conflict.
FULL SPOILERS BELOW------------
In a way, this film gives us the conclusion we all wanted. In the series, Kyousuke was really in love with Madoka, and she with him, and it was always clear they would end up together. He kept dating Hikaru because he didn’t want to break her heart, maybe also because she was a “safe” alternative. As mentioned above, this dynamic never changed which became increasingly frustrating as the series went on, he would have to tell Hikaru the truth at some point, and the longer he waited the worse he would hurt her.
This movie finally is that conclusion, but there is no sense of achievement, only raw sadness, because what we wished for was ultimately a crushing breakup story, and that is what we got.
Most powerful is how the film treats Hikaru. In the series, she became nothing but an annoying plot device, someone to keep Kyousuke from Madoka to artificially extend the show’s lifetime, her screeching voice certainly didn’t help, it was someone you just wanted to do away with.
But here she is the most interesting and sympathetic character. After all, it is her heart that is broken and ground into dust, because Kyousuke does break up with her. Not only that, he shuts off all contact completely. But she doesn’t let go, calls him day after day, visits him unannounced, always appearing in high spirits which cover her ruined interior. It must be doubly harsh to be depressed when you’re the designated cheerful person.
The film is really about Hikaru coming to terms with the fact that she wants to return to that day when they were still together, but can’t. It is an insanely painful thing to accept, so her actions shouldn’t be judged too harshly. People today are in denial about lesser things.
After all, what happened to her is through no fault of her own and very “unfair”, she doesn’t understand it at all. She did everything for Kyousuke, while Madoka really only had to exist for him to fall for her, this is what Hikaru accuses Madoka of. Of course, she is wrong, affection can’t be judged in those metrics, Hikaru tells herself in her desperation that the situation can be rectified if she just puts in the work, tries hard enough.
While the series always teased us with change but restored the status quo, the movie gives us the change with total resolve and teases us with restoration. But it really is over for good this time. In their final scene Hikaru appears in front of Kyousuke’s home late at night. They argue once more, and he leaves her to her tears. When he comes back, she is crouched on his front poach, waiting for his return. He can’t even bring himself to walk past her, and goes to a dingy supermarket instead. It starts to rain, and he can only think of one thing, how she must now be getting soaked. He sees umbrellas for sale. He could run back to her, maybe some reconciliation would be possible. In the series, this would have happened. But this is the new, adult Kyousuke, and he overcomes this final temptation. Instead, the tears start flowing. “Goodbye Hikaru”.
What he does to Hikaru is quiet cruel, and his actions are certainly controversial. In their final argument, she asks him what she even was to him, and it is a good question he never answers. In some ways, she was always just his backup plan, when things wouldn’t work out with Madoka he could return to her, but now that they did he discards her.
But he was a confused teenager as well. And there is so much pain in his brooding silence, by the end of the film it’s pretty clear he really did love her, but couldn’t ignore his feelings for Madoka any longer. He completely separates himself from Hikaru because he knows that if he gave her an inch she would have taken a mile. She flat out doesn’t accept that he broke up with her, and any reprieve from him she would take as a false hope that maybe time can be turned back. It would be more cruel in a way.
As one relationship dies, another forms. Like Kyousuke, Madoka is quiet different from her TV-series version. There, she had a tough no-nonsense attitude, was on top of most events, did cheesy saxophone solos at night, and got into fights with gang members, most of which she won. It was easy to like her, and her character design is straight up iconic.
She is much more vulnerable in this film. She loves Kyousuke, she is jealous of Hikaru’s relationship with him, and very much ashamed of that jealousy. There is a sense that her feelings have been kept inside far too long, her cool personality didn’t permit their expression, so that they must now explode outward.
Just like for Kyousuke, for Madoka it is a choice, between him and Hikaru, as Hikaru is her childhood best friend. In the series, it seemed Madoka tolerated the relationship between the two because it made Hikaru happy, and that she was too aloof to really care. But she can’t ignore her feelings anymore, and ultimately she accepts whatever happens to Hikaru, as long as she can be with Kyousuke. Is that egoistic? Maybe, but it is also how many people would act. This movie is not concerned with blaming anyone.
The most cathartic moment in the film is when Kyousuke finally confesses his love to Madoka. It is night, the rest of the town left for the festival, while Kyousuke and Madoka have to stay home to waste away at their studies. At that moment, it seems they are the only lonely people in the world, with the fireworks outside to remind them. She calls him, crying. The voice acting throughout the film is incredible, but here it reaches its peak, there is so much shame and confused hurt in her voice. It’s entirely one static drab shot, Kyousuke talking on the phone in his living room, there is no music, no flashy background art, the movie is so confident in its emotional impact that is removes all distractions, the antithesis of a Shinkai picture. Madoka tears down her protective walls, she is so afraid that Kyousuke might not like her after all, she blames herself for being too passive. He has to tell her at that moment or never again. “I want to see you.”
A photo is probably the ultimate means to return to that day, so they make multiple appearances in the film. There are the polaroids Kyousuke takes with Madoka when they’re on a date and in the final scene of the film the pictures in the photo album entitled “Sweet Memories” of Madoka’s and Hikaru’s shared childhood. In a flashback, Madoka remembers the three of them looking through that album, they joke around, everything was still alright. But these friendships are indeed nothing but a sweet memory, just as a photo can never really take us back. Now it just reminds us of what was lost, and it would probably be best never to look at it again.
“I Want to Return to That Day”, the characters want to return to the days of the TV-series, when everyone was friends and everything simple, but the message of the film is that you can’t, certain things can’t be undone. You can only heal by moving on, but it will take time to accept this. In all the hurt, there is some consultation. Madoka and Kyousuke can finally be together for real, they are accepted into college, they have a future ahead of them. And in the post-credits scene, it seems Hikaru has also regained some of her happiness.
But it is not just the characters, it is us who want to return to that day as well. We live in a time of revivalism. It has been 80s revivalism for the longest time, but that aesthetic has gotten so stale at this point I suspect it will be replaced soon. It was just last year that this very series was rereleased on Blue-ray, the same year there was a successful kickstarter to publish the manga this is based on in the west. The future under capitalism is impossible, but we can’t think of an alternative outside it, so we look towards a supposedly better past. We find refuge in these old styles of music, storytelling, clothing and animation.
And it is true that much has been lost since then, cultural artifacts out of print, for a long time it was very difficult to even obtain KOR in legal ways, its legacy only maintained by Italian Web 1.0 fanpages. But with the emergence of vaporwave, in which 80s J-Pop of the kind you hear in KOR, so called City Pop, is often sampled, we reached into the deepest corners of the dust bin of history, and so the Orange Road was revived.
It is nice to give the forgotten a second chance, but we go much further. We are just like Hikaru, who keeps returning to Kyousuke, our media landscape is obsessed with going back, remixing, remaking, entire big-budget franchises like Stranger Things exist solely to euthanize us in comfortable 80s nostalgia. We keep looking into the photo album even though it hurts ever more. And according to this movie, this is exactly the wrong approach. We can only push onward, look forward, no matter how impossible it seems. Just like for Hikaru, it will be painful for us to realize that time can’t be turned back, but there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.
