Review of The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes / 夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口, directed by Tomohisa Taguchi

For about two years, I worked as a film and television critic over at MovieWeb. During my time at that contract position, I found myself watching a ton of movies that I would have never had access to, and there were so many perspectives and cultures I watched whether it was at home, or at the New York Film Festival.

The Tunnel to Summer I watched before it came out in American movie theaters. It was something I was assigned to, so I watched the Japanese dub one night and did my official write up for MovieWeb.

But recently I was just thinking about this movie again, as it has a lot of relevant themes on grief and what we would do in order to force ourselves to forget, move on, or stay in a certain moment.

So I decided to watch it again, which is why this blog post came about! Now this movie is more accessible, as it’s been out for a bit, so it was easy to get ahold of it.

Let’s get into the review!

Two young high schoolers, trapped in their grief, discover a magical tunnel that helps them remember what they lost.

We meet our first main character, Kaoru, at the beginning of this movie. He goes to school in rural Japan, and he doesn’t really spend a lot of time with other people. One day, he meets a young girl, Anzu, at the train station, and he gives her his umbrella. She discloses that she is an orphan, and Kaoru seems to think this is good. They then give each other their phon numbers.

But when he goes to school, he realizes Anzu is the new transfer student from Tokyo. She doesn’t seem interested in befriending anyone in the class though, and when the mean girl of the class steals Anzu’s manga, she gets angry and punches the girl.

We also learn that Kaoru’s father is abusive to him, and hits him. He thinks that Kaoru’s mother abandoned them, and he blames Kaoru for the death of his little sister. He insists that Kaoru bring his sister back, and Kaoru decides to run away from everything. He then stumbles upon a tunnel, where his little sister’s slipper and a dead pet, a parrot, are within.

As he emerges from the tunnel, he realizes a week has passed in the outside world. Still he goes into the tunnel the next day, but finds Anzu there. They have a chat, decide to help each other in here, and they learn three seconds in the tunnel means two hours will pass outside.

We also learn that Karen, Kaoru’s little sister, died trying to get a beetle for him. He wants her back, and Anzu seems to be more reluctant about continuing to go into the tunnel because she’s scared of what it could mean.

They return to it though, and spend three days in there in the outside world’s time. They get to a stack of papers within it, but spend more time than expected in there. They head to Anzu’s place when coming out, as it’s early morning, and she explains to him in there that her grandfather was a manga artist.

She wanted to become a manga artist just like him, and her parents kicked her out of the house when they learned that. The papers in the tunnel was the manga she wrote as a girl. Kaoru goes home and discovers his father has a new wife, which is his stepmother.

He then tells Anzu they can’t go into the tunnel one last time yet, but then disappears. She learns from a letter from him that the tunnel can’t fix their desires, only showing what was lost. He wants her to become a manga artist, and she does become a successful one.

Kaoru is in the tunnel, and he reunites with his sister during the day she died. He starts getting messages from the outside world, and his sister tells him that he will only be happy with someone he loves. He realizes this is Anzu, and that he needs to move on from the past. It doesn’t exist anymore.

Eight years have passed, and Anzu receives a message from him. She goes to the tunnel, and finds him inside. They kiss, and then he leaves the tunnel years after he first entered it.

Overall Thoughts

I think this was a solid movie when it came to the themes, but I wanted more from it. I believe it was originally a manga, so it would make more sense to me to expand on the tunnel.

Like it kind of just exists in this world, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. I also would’ve been completely fine without any sort of romance in the movie—it might’ve been stronger to me if they overcame the past by realizing they could platonically love other people, not just romantically.

But I did enjoy it! I just wish there was more from it. Other people definitely might love it more than I did, and that’s totally fine. Taste is subjective.

Go watch it if you are interested in it and haven’t already!

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