Well, whatever I might have thought about the show before with its vague description, I definitely didn’t expect THAT.
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Summary
When they were young, four girls made a wish on a rock in a forest clearing, believing that if they all wished for the same thing, it would come true. Now in high school, one of the girls, Mizukoshi Saki hasn’t been coming to tennis club practice, even though it was her that urged her friend Natsumi to aim for the national tournament. When Saki reveals on the last day of school that she will be moving to Tokyo, Yuka and Rin call Natsumi and Saki to that same rock behind the temple to try and get them to make up. When Rin voices out their subconscious wish to fly, the rock glows and they find themselves in the air, realizing that their wish actually came true.
(Apologies for the lack of screenshot quality, this is the pre-air version. Real thing airs on Thurs 5th.)
Vantage’s First Impression
Wow. What a nice surprise, on the morning of April Fools’ Day to wake up and see what I thought would have been a “four cute girls doing cute things” setup, and find out that it was in fact so much more. I actually thought it was an April Fools joke from the ridiculously small file size (40.5 MB) but that turned out to just be the quality drop from this being a pre-air instead of one of those 5min shows that end up getting nowhere.
Anyway, here we have a slightly unusual slice-of-life, attributed by the fact that it edges towards a more realistic slice of everyday life,as well as blowing that out of the water right at the very end. But we’ll get to that later. Natsuiro Kiseki isn’t about moe moe kyun at all – it’s about friendship and drama, immediately pointed out at the start when Saki (yes, I went and learnt their names) fails to turn up for club practice and gets more distant from her friend Natsumi, only to tell everyone a few days later that she’s moving to Tokyo. Wait where have I seen that setup before? It’s obvious she didn’t tell Natsumi, Yuka and Rin to avoid hurting them, as well as making it harder for her to leave, but it was very tsundere of her to just go all tsuntsun on them and pretend there was no promise between her and Natsumi. I don’t think she’s a bad girl at all, just a little…conflicted.
It’s pretty hard to classify these four into stereotypes, but that can only be a good thing – it makes them more unique after all. I mean, we don’t have an actual ditzy airhead in the group, though if I had to pick then Yuka would be the closest one. And even then she’s the more energetic, enthusiastic type. Rin is your quiet, soft-spoken one, a bit like Ano Natsu’s Remon-senpai but nowhere near as crafty. It’s a good cast, with a lot of room for character development and nothing too cliché.
Oh, I know now. It reminds me so much of Anohana, with the childhood friend setup, making wishes and an incident that drives the group apart. Speaking of making wishes, becoming idols and performing at the Budokan as their childhood wish brought me back to those K-ON days (Houkago Tea Time, is that you?) where everything was perfect ^^
I was surprised there was an actual response from the rock – then I remembered this is a Sunrise production. No way would they produce a slice-of-life without any fantasy in it xD Natsuiro Kiseki (or Summer-Coloured Miracle) has a lot of potential, and is an interesting take on the idea that miracles really do come true. This show could be one to watch this season.
Possibility of Watching: Sure
Possibility of Blogging: Definitely
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Eva’s First Impression:
O____O Wow that was unexpected, they actually flew!!!
I liked how they set off the tensions right off the bat. It was no surprise that Saki was going to be transferring, that part is nothing new. We’ve seen that set up everywhere- but it seems that a lot of people were expecting ‘moe moe cutesy’ sort of thing. Instead we’ve given drama that will be involved as they will be tested on whether they can overcome… or rather, can Saki in particular, overcome what feels to be an inevitable fate of moving to Tokyo. The clock is ticking and they only have a limited amount of time to tend the strains in their relationships with each other, so they don’t end up regretting it, and Saki leaving on a bad note. Sure enough they’ll figure it out, the question is how they do it. It would be interesting to see whether they try a number of things, such as practice together to enter an audition or whatever to become idols together. Of course, as I just mentioned – the clock is ticking and we have no idea how much time Saki actually has.
I do wonder whether at some point or another, that they would wish for Saki to stay and not have to move. I mean, the rock actually worked- but how many times can it? Is there a limit? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were.
Possibility of Blogging: Guaranteed (Will be Sharing with Vantage)