Review of Waiting in the Summer

The MC looks like he might be a little more introspective from the first scene, giving the occasional wistful internal monologue, but he quickly becomes dumb, oblivious as your thickest romcom main. Worst of all, he's generic in his I WUVS you dynamic with his alien waifu, having nothing else to his character other than being a jittery mess (until he isn't) and wanting to preserve these precious memories, since there probably isn't a heaven or D-g or whatever. Most of the characters are shown to be pretty damn stupid and oblivious by episode 3. Those are some intense misunderstandings and a much-too-tangled love geometry.Of course, Kanna will eventually confess to the MC, and, despite the obviousness of her interest in him—implicitly announced by the dialogue and reactions when Remon is filming them; learn to read the room, moron—he'll be surprised (peepers going wide), and say, "W-w-what, you like me? N-no way, but, ah, um, I actually love someone else, sorry, Kanna-chan." They might seem tolerable from the beginning, but almost all the characters are dull and one-note: whether it's the nerdy alien love interest, the feisty tom boy who "secretly" loves the MC, the girl, Mio, who doesn't wear underwear and is a bit shy and likes the horse-faced guy who likes Kanna, or the horse-faced motherfucker who has a barely concealed mommy complex. It's so predictable, and if you've seen any romcoms, you'll know exactly how this tangled love geometry will untangle itself. The writing would have to be far deeper to muster something so predictable and the characters more dynamic or compelling.

Despite one character being an alien, Remon is the biggest weirdo of the bunch (her fufufu laugh is better than average, but it was a wasted opportunity when the MC imagined them laughing behind his back, and she didn't do the fufufu laugh...), who obviously knows more than she lets on, but no one really pauses to take note. She's the only memorable character, being cute and manipulative, having actual awareness, a mysterious background, an amusing demeanor and laugh and being one of the few sources of humor, along with the mascot character. Might as well have made a show about her instead.

There's also the cute Pokemon-like critter, Rinon, acting as Ichika's pet; she's clearly not a terrestrial life form, yet no one seems to pay any attention? Ichika doesn't try to hide him, make excuses, or use some kind of illusion or cloaking device to make her look like a Chihuahua. Of course one of the plot points is that Ichika thinks that the sex-crazed Kaito figured out she is an alien, and it frightens her that he might turn against her. She's trying to blend in rather than act as a mischievous alien, like Lum would, so how does she not think them seeing her Pokemon might be a tip leading to her hidden identity unraveling? It's like they needed a cute mascot quota to be met but didn't feel like going through any added hassle for her, which kind of breaks the writing. It actually worked when Rinon showed up for a comedy scene because Remon was handing out her spiked drinks beforehand, and they blacked out all their memories. Yet a later scene has Kaito feeding her Pokemon ramen casually? The guy is so eager to stick it in whatever hole he can find that he doesn't care that this suspicious girl who lives with him, after knowing each other for only one day, has a Pokemon? By this point, the MC should realistically know she's an alien and is trying to conceal her identity (either to protect her from the MIB or get a chance to try out his anal probe fetish), or they should make a better effort to not give huge hints to the cast who will take every chance they can to double down on being dumbasses.

The writer simply does what he wants instead of making the characters seem like they have a thought process. The aesthetic and 8mm film framing device make the series a lot more compelling than it otherwise would be, and it's decently fun in spite of the flawed writing and tedious drama dumps. During the beach episode, another grill from childhood is introduced to further complicate and dramatize the dull convolution of the love geometry, which is terribly forced and without any real buildup or emotion.

Even most of the comedy is eventually strangled by the sappy drama we've all seen hundreds of times. "Be prepared to work your fingers to the boner" (as opposed to bone) was a line I wanted to point to to give an idea about the comedy, but it seems that's a crass localization, and the series tends to be more tasteful, instead being tasteless in the sense of having no flavor. The animation is used decently when it comes to providing varied facial expressions and accentuating a few moments, and there's a small amount of physical and visual humor. Most of the decent parts come from Remon or Rinon, but there's a touch of weirdness early on that has even the main couple providing a few laughs, like the delusions of the MC, which are largely dropped after only a few episodes.

The plotting is so convenient with different characters running into each other all over town, activating plot forwarding or exposition and relationship or feelings dumps. In the span of 1-2 episodes, the MC goes looking for Ichika. Gets stuck. Runs into Remon at "random" (like anything is random with her), who gives him a pep talk. Next scene, Kanna sees MC from afar. Kanna runs into Ichika at MC's house. Kanna runs home crying, and Ichika sees everything about her romance and purpose from a new angle. Kanna runs into horse-face, who is waiting along the way, leaning against a telephone pole. He comforts her as she cries. They cut to a shot of Mio crouched behind the bus stop, crying, while neither Kanna nor horse-face know she's there (seriously, wtf?). Horse-face confesses to Kanna a few days later. I'm like, "Let me guess, Mio will be there to kiss his booboos." She appears out of nowhere to hug him from behind, and he was standing at a kind of overhang area with fencing behind him, so you have to ask where she even came from, as there's no way she could sneak up on him.

Other than a few of the anxious earlier moments, the series seems so predictable and by the numbers to the point that none of the interactions feel real or have anything compelling about them. Ultimately, while I'm thankful it was there because it added a touch of mystique and variety, it's questionable if there was even a point in bothering with the sci-fi at all, other than to make a rather dull romance more intriguing and colorful, and maybe present some silly metaphor about the difficulties of forging an enduring love, but the series fails to exploit the sci-fi elements to their fullest.

Ichika's reason for coming to the earth boils down to an ancestral blood memory of no importance rather than insightful or well integrated, and the story doesn't have any of the usual tropes about uniting interstellar races or ending conflict. While I'm in no way wishing for those cliches, what I am saying is that the writing was half-baked and sloppy because most of the plot points and ideas feel like they are simply there and not tethered together in a truly meaningful way. There seems to be a muddled nod to the "human condition," and, as far as I can tell, the "aliens" are just more technologically advanced humans, who likely have some connection to the earth in the first place, though that isn't explored.

The focus on love geometry, and all the old hat and syrupy drama with these one-note characters that that entails, over the filmmaking and sci-fi plot, is what renders this title as seemingly well-received back when it aired but a forgotten dud today. The filmmaking framing device feels secondary for most of the run, but it's used in a decent manner to reinforce what's going on in the main plot, emphasizes the nostalgic tone well, and provides a decent-enough ending. The sci-fi is similarly shoehorned at the beginning for light mystery elements and heavily at the end for some conflict outside of whiny brats confessing, being rejected, and the butthurt that often follows. The main problem is that the writer chose to focus on a setup that relies heavily on character writing but left them underwritten, so we're left with a lukewarm slop of treacly romance geometry, sporadic comedy, tedious drama, shallow thematics and a lack of substance in general, and thin sci-fi.