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2020 was a really weird year in every aspect, even when it comes to short length anime. A few years back, almost nobody cared about them and thus it was normal for them to get a decent rating because only a few people checked them out and thus they were given these shows positive ratings.
But in the last year, almost all, if not all short length shows received very poor ratings, meaning not even these people were giving them good ratings. Natsunagu! is the only one I watched besides Heya Camp so I’m here to comment about this peculiar case. What is strange about the poor reception this show received is that is about a sad waifu, thus it would normally get a good reception.
Compared to most other short length anime that I watched (Fastening Days, Sengoku Choujuu Giga, Pupipo!, Ani*Kuri15, Bikini Warriors, Digital Juice, the first IGPX, Inferno Cop, fucking Teekyuu, fucking Urda, fucking Pupa, fucking Abunai Sisters, fucking Master of Torque, fucking Netsuzou Trap, and lots of specials or extras of normal lenght series, usually with chibi art styles) it has a sort of plot with continuity, somewhat likeable characters and is even decently animated, so what happened?
The set up of the story is pretty stupid, no one would buy that the protagonist and her online friend would change their addresses but not their cell phone numbers and she even talks to the screen to tell the viewer that she had not other option, why? It’s not explained, it happened that way only to begin the plot, nothing else. And she didn’t even got her actual address, just a drawing, to make all of this even sillier.
Personally, I also have problems to buy all of this because I am from a generation where you would normally make friends from face to face, in the real life, and even then I’m not the type of person that considers every person they talk to as their friends, but I recognize that younger people that grew up in the digital era and make lots of online friends they talk to every day could relate to the conflict and buy the premise, unlike me.
Anyways, after the first episode the protagonist travels to a somewhat faraway place that suffered an earthquake in order to meet her online friend she met on a videogame without even knowing what she looks like and along the way she meets other people and ask them if they know about her and where does she lives. She temporarily lives with them, gets to know them, becomes their friend and gathers information regarding her friend along with them until she finds her.
Leaving aside the crush a young girl has on an older policeman (which I find weird), the people from that prefecture remind me of the cast of Flying Witch, all of them are kind and friendly, most of the time they are happy, very nice people to tag along and the main girl has cute interactions with them, nothing more, nothing less.
Eventually all that travel is rendered meaningless because the show hints a tragic ending that doesn’t happen, and the two final episodes change the tone from a relaxing and happy one to a melodramatic one with the two girls screaming at each other before getting the most simple and underwhelming resolution there is. What happened to the girl wasn’t that big of a deal and even if you can say that it was, all it took was for the protagonist to cheer her up for two episodes (about 8 to 10 minutes) and tell her that everything is gonna be fine, and that’s it, that’s how everything was resolved. Lame, what a waste of not so much time.
Visually, the show looks and sounds cute and relaxing, as it should, and there’s really nothing else to say about these aspects, the voice acting is fine, the soundtrack, whenever present, and especially the ending song, warms you up, the backgrounds are beautifully drawn, everything here is ok.
Now, the main issue of the show is not the crappy resolution, but rather that it failed at what it was trying to achieve, it’s a promotional series done by the Kumamoto prefecture itself, which is why is visually pretty and all of the characters are very likeable, but the thing is, you don’t get to see much of the places themselves, because the main conflict wasn’t allowing that, thus it fails to capture the attention of potential turists.
And I even find it to be kind of insulting to the victims of the actual earthquake that happened in the real place, imagine everything they might have lost, and this series chooses to represent them with a girl that didn’t lost much, and whose depression goes away with extreme ease and just by talking to a girl she barely knows, if I were one of them I would find this to be even offensive.
In the end, Natsunagu! is unexpectedly beautiful to look at and it gives you a calming and relaxing time for 9 episodes (the first was stupid, the last two were painful to watch) but it fails at everything that tries to do and its own messages backfire to it because of their poor handling. It is still among the better short lenght shows that I watched, because most of what I watched are complete garbage, but it has nothing to do against Heya Camp, which aired at the same time, and even less against Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko, which I consider to be the only worthy short length anime I’ve ever seen. Honestly, the best thing you will get out of it is the awesome cover.
But I think that at least we can all agree that it’s a much better disaster series than Japan Sinks, man did I hate that dreadful show.
4/10
