“Tunnel to Summer”, a romantic and beautiful animated film about the weather, adapted from the manga by Mei Hachimoku

The adaptation of the manga invites the viewer on a sentimental journey through time.

Melodrama is the recipe for manga, which artfully mixes romance, rhythm and graphic art. Tunnel to Summerfrom Wednesday June 5 in theaters, is part of the shōjo trend, which targets high school girls in Japan.

Born at the same time, mangas are in the Japanese archipelago the equivalent of French serial novels of the end of the 19th century. They announce TV series, and before them in cinema, Louis Feuillade (1916), serials (1940s) and franchises (James Bond, Star Wars, Marvel). Soap operas and series build loyalty and unite an audience. They also allow authors to develop characters and make plots more complex. Tunnel to Summer does not leave there, just like its adaptation to the cinema.



Tunnel to Summer is a minimalist jewel. Japanese graphic art is pure. The line, as in calligraphy, is its soul. With its rails, its wooden sleepers, its black hole into which the characters sink, the lives of two adolescents play out. An art student and artist, Kaoru is struggling to recover from the loss of his little sister, when he meets Anzu who introduces him to a tunnel with magical power that will allow him to take the step, and a little more. Because it offers to those who dare to venture there what they desire most dearly.

But this dark passage contains a trap. The more time we spend indoors, the greater the number of hours, or even days spent, when we exit. Basically, we age faster there. Anzu guides Kaoru, makes him find his sister who soothes him, the back and forths multiply, interspersed with classes, school, and classmates who begin to take a little too much interest in this magnet that seems become the tunnel.

This horizontal well is linked to trauma. In Akira Kurosawa’s sketch film Dreams (1990), a Japanese soldier during World War II finds himself facing a tunnel that confronts him with himself. In Tunnel to Summer, Kaoru is accompanied, but he carries out the same introspection which awakens his inner ghosts. Specters inhabit Japanese culture and daily life, Mei Hachimoku, author, and Tomohisa Taguchi, adapter and director, invoke them tactfully.

But the film is not a dark drama, the light shines at the end of the tunnel, through a dramaturgy which leads from the loss of the little sister, to the meeting with Anzu who fulfills her. It’s not a spoiler to say that love is at the end of the road, in this beautiful animated film which won the Paul Grimault Prize at the last Annecy Animated Film Festival.

Gender : Animation Romance/Science Fiction
Director : Tomohisa Taguchi
Country : Japan
Duration : 1h24
Exit : June 5 2024
Distributer : Star Invest films France
Synopsis: According to an urban legend, finding and crossing the mysterious Urashima Tunnel offers those who dare to venture there what they most desire, but at a price that makes the experience perilous: a few seconds within it turn into several hours in real life! Kaoru, a young high school student, who is having trouble getting over the disappearance of his little sister, will team up with Anzu, an enigmatic young girl who offers her help to try the adventure. But what does she expect from him in return? And what will he be left with once he has passed through the tunnel?