Review of Waiting in the Summer
In short this is a coming of age anime. The usual school kids dealing with emotions of love etc. The protagonist has a love for film and the anime starts with him testing a new camera at night outside... where a blue flash in the sky changes everything. A mysterious girl appears and the anime explores relationship and .... aliens. I really struggled to get into this. Firstly the start was intriguing a slice of life starting with a literal bang! But it failed to deliver. If your put of by love triangles.... get ready for LOVE OCTAGON 2000....Because hes in love with her.... butshe loves him ... but he loves her ....
The film aspect was nice and was probably the only ongoing plot line that they made sense with.
The anime is all over the place. The addition of aliens made it really difficult for me to view this as a slice of life. generally slice of life is just that ... cute guy / girl doing life stuff.
The art is ok its nothing amazing. The sound is ok its nothing amazing. The characters are a little one dimensional ...and at times I found myself getting irritated with them.
I adored one couple who did eventually make progress... but I cant rate an anime high because two supports maybe got together. An anime for me to invest in has to have at least one interesting lead... but I the two leads fell short.
Alien chan is too wishy washy... and I feel like we needed more backstory to her for me to actually at least understand her a bit more. And Film senpai.... well he falls in love with a random stranger after one day... not really one for love at first sight... so maybe I am bias. But things felt convenient.
And drama felt obligatory.
In short this anime tries to do to much and becomes jumbled in the process. The end got me a little. The message it wants to convey is be brave and go for it. Don't waste your time. But it gets buried under Aliens where it may of just been believable to actually have her as a study abroad student whose time was up. The alien plot line detracted from the heart of the anime. And it didn't in the long term add anything. I think the story could of been told without it and filled out the characters more instead of adding in the alien chase scenes.
I think there are some amazing animes out there which cover these themes better. If your bored and need a time filler you could check this out. But don't expect anime of the year.