Kimagure Orange☆Road: Ano Hi ni Kaeritai

I have a long history with Kimagure Orange Road. I don't remember exactly when I started watching the anime, but I believe it was in 2018 or 2017.
I never wanted to end it too quickly, as it was always a pleasure to be consumed slowly, as it is a 1988 anime after all.

Today, I finished the film that ends the story. I had this promise to myself, that I would only finish the film when I graduated, and here I am, at this crucial moment trying to explain a little what this extremely individual experience I had was.

The entire Kimagure (anime) has an episodic rhythm. ... Few episodic episodes have notable consequences in the following episodes, as is customary with anime at the time. However, the film takes us by surprise: there are no powers, there are not many visual effects to dictate the story, there is no repetition of history and there are no event cuts either. The characters have now grown up, they want to move their lives forward and to do so they need to be direct, as life moves on.
I was very surprised by the content of the film and the decisions made by the characters, as they have a completely different scale from the animated series, and that really pleased me. Kimagure Orange Road is a lesson not only in storytelling but also in life.

It probably took 6 or 7 years just to finish this series, and I can say it was worth every minute.

Everything ends eventually.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Kimagure Orange Road, the series was nothing more than anime comfort food. Something to throw on late at night whenever I was too tired to focus on much else. The pastel colors, loveable characters, and occasional great episodes and moments kept me coming back to it despite the issues with its often soap opera-esque writing and questionable characterization.

The thing that separates the film from the series that precedes it is the reality of the situation. It takes everything about the series, its silliness, and warmth, and just leaves behind its characters. It forces them to confront the ... deeply amoral and borderline abusive nature of their behavior. If Orange Road was a sitcom designed to go on forever, I Want to Return to That Day is what happens when a sitcom must end. Life does not have easy comforting solutions, and even its most intense moments are rarely cathartic. There are no dramatic music swells while characters scream at each other, there is only raw silence. The film almost borders on genuine slow cinema thanks to its crushing pace. Everything is minimal, there are few jump cuts, instead, the proverbial camera tends to linger, letting the audience take in the small things. There are no distractions. The show is over, life goes on.

Kyosuke Kasuga may come from a family with supernatural powers, he may be a time traveler with whacky, scheming friends and a crush on a girl who wields guitar picks as weapons and dramatically plays the saxophone in the rain whenever she's sad. But at the end of the day, none of that was the point of Orange Road, it wasn't about the powers or the fights or the intrigue, it was about the people, about the moments with high school friends you don't talk to anymore.

Everything ends eventually, it almost always hurts. But that's okay.

Life goes on.

This is the first movie which could be called a spin-off because it's an original piece of work written by Kenji Tereda, the main scenario writer for the TV series rather than based off the original Manga.

It takes on a more serious tone during the summer when Kyousuke is preparing for university entrance exams. There's no mention of supernatural powers nor are any used, just your slice-of-life romance. Kyousuke's originally kind indecisive character is changed to be more cold and decisive so it's no longer a romcom and can be quite bitter which is probably why it was ill-received. Even Izumi Matsumoto criticised the work, ... suggesting viewers took it as a parallel world story instead because of how harsh it was.

The supernatural powers were partly what made the original TV series fun so with the sudden change in mood and powers left out, it just feels like your bland romance movie.