Review of Waiting in the Summer

If there was one statement LA would say about Ano Natsu de Matteru, it would be "It's like Onegai Teacher but with the fat trimmed out" and that statement pretty much how LA feels about this anime. LA only says that both Onegai Teacher and Ano Natsu de Matteru are similar in many ways, from the alien humanoid girl befriending the main protagonist to the love triangles to it being one part comedy, one part drama. LA will say that Ano Natsu de Matteru felt better executed if LA would have of chosen which was the better anime, why?..well let's get on to it. The plot ofAno Natsu de Matteru is about Kaito Kirishima voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki and his friends wanting to make a movie together in the summer but with romantic unrequited tensions from all sides with a new transfer student wanting to be in the movie, both comedic and romantic tensions ensues. The plot goes by the simple summer slice of life comedy route for the most part until it ramps up the romantic tension with the entire unrequited love conga line as well as the mysterious transfer student of Ichika Takatsuki voiced by Haruka Tomatsu.

In terms of characters, our cast of characters are somewhat stereotypical, LA says somewhat only because they improve over time with the romantic tensions and confessions that allow them more development to them as a character and more or less feels like it plays against the type of some of the characters stereotypes. However the character that DOES NOT get this treatment was to LA was to Ichika, she played the role of the perfect girl and her being an alien only sweetened this fact and although she to gained something of a character development in the form of her secret and her romantic ties to Kaito, she was still through and through the "perfect girl trope". Now where this actually worked was in the unrequited love conga line LA said, mainly of Kanna Tanigawa voiced by Kaori Ishihara a love interest and friend of Kaito and Tetsurou Ishigaki voiced by Hideki Ogihara, Kaito's friend who have feelings for Kanna. LA more or less thought that Mio Kitahara voiced by Kanna Asumi was a welcome addition to the unrequited love conga line what with her weird personality quirk (and playing against the type "in some way") and as for Kaito himself, he was an "ok" character as LA wasn't phased by his romantic decisions as it was quite obvious who he was gonna fall in love with even if it kinda annoyed and pissed LA off. LA's favoruite character?...the only one of the main cast LA didn't talk about, Lemon Yamano voiced by Yukari Tamura as she was rather mysterious genre savvy and something of an audience surrogate to the unrequited love conga line, not to mention her trickster personality, her voice actor and her obvious suspicions about Ichika in the form of the movie they were filming pretty much cemented her as LA's favourite character.

In terms of animation by JC Staff, if there was one word to say about the animation was that it was consistent throughout, from the very detailed and vibrant character designs to the lush rural background work to even the aesthetics with the retro filming, it was a slightly above average work for JC Staff and the consistent animation throughout got high marks because of it.

In terms of voice acting, oooooohhh boy do LA have some things to talk about, let's get the easy characters done first, firstly would be Kaori Ishihara as Kanna Tanigawa, who did an exceptional job in voicing her in both her tsundere as well as her more dramatic moments in the anime and she was LA's favorite voice actor because of it, Haruka Tomatsu was a close second, only because of the her role she was given (this wasn't the first time she voiced an alien girl who becomes a love interest *cough* To Love Ru *cough*), but even Haruka Tomatsu did pretty well in this anime even with the role of Ichika. Tetsurou's voice actor Hideki Ogihara also did pretty well on his part and was nearly on par with Kaori Ishihara as well in terms of dramatic performances. Now for Mio and Lemon's voice actors. LA thought that even though LA could see that Kanna Asumi as Mio did a great job in voicing the shy Mio with her dramatic romantic moments, LA thought that Kanna Asumi was somewhat restricted for some reason because of her placed in the role of the shy girl, it just felt slightly restrictive for LA when hearing her, but that was just LA, Kanna Asumi still did well in her performance here, as for Yukari Tamura, her voicing the deadpanned genre savvy character, LA thought that she rather excelled in the comedic moments rather than the dramatic ones which makes sense in that regard. As for minor voice cast, from Ai Kayano to Aya Hisakawa, the best minor voice cast member HAS to go to Yuka Iguchi as Chiharu Arisawa, a rival love interest to Mio, why did LA pick Yuka Iguchi???...because her genki levels are INSANELY HIGH borderline yandere vocals.

Comedically, Ano Natsu de Matteru does have those character jabs and situational comedy moments for the laughs, but this anime has anime and movie references thrown here and there like the obvious MIB name drop to Highschool of the Dead, but as LA said in the voice acting section, LA thought that Yukari Tamura and her character were really the best in the comedic department.

Romantically however is a bit more complicated as LA does have mixed feelings with the romance in this anime, it's one part great due to the characters themselves playing against the type or being ironic and the other part, the romantic development does develop the individual characters as well and some of the choices that were made "did make sense" yet LA didn't like it and the unrequited love conga line did make the dynamic of the group of friends question themselves. LA's frustration mostly came from the love triangle of Kaito, Ichika and Kanna (especially Kanna) as well as the obvious of Tetsurou and Mio, but LA does "get" why the choices happened in the romantic side of things and as compensation at least it brought in much better character development for both the losers (in the form of getting over our rejection) and winners (relationship-wise showing they really do love each other even amongst the romantic anarchy).

Now at the start of this review, LA pretty much said that Ano Natsu de Matteru was a better anime than Onegai Teacher, yes LA did say that, but in better detail, Ano Natsu de Matteru felt like it went straight to what it had to do with it's main cast and essentially had no filler (thus "trimming down the fat") as well as bring in the dramatic comedic moments when it needed to. Onegai Teacher for LA had a bit of problem with it's "filler moments" as well as how they handled the "secret" far latter compared to Ano Natsu de Matteru's reveal. Nonetheless Onegai Teacher is still a decent anime even if LA critiqued it saying it had some problems where Ano Natsu de Matteru fixed.

The ending rather ramped up the tension to what is a slice of life romance anime, by bringing in the "chase to the goal" kind of situation and really by the climax of the ending is brought about a rather teary ending which by the final scenes gave LA both something of a satisfying ending and FINALLY gave us some context as to who Lemon is as well as showing with subtle hints to make the teary climax an overall satisfying ending. The only problem in this is...well...SPOILERS!.....for the most part no one really gets together and are just "friends"...which was probably the only thing that irked this ending...nonetheless satisfying ending for the most part.

Ano Natsu de Matteru overall did really feel like what the title implies..."waiting in the summer", from summer vacation to teenage hormones as well as complicated love triangles and squares typical of romance animes. Did Ano Natsu de Matteru satisfy LA?...heck yes, is it a good romance, yes but slightly cliche, but who cares, Ano Natsu de Matteru is better than Onegai Teacher?...they're both good...it depends how you see both executed really and finally, is it a good anime?...well if you like complicated love triangles and the romance genre...then yeah...just sit back and watch the summer sun of Ano Natsu de Matteru as well as romantic chaos that comes later...