The Summer · review
Spoiler warning
This review may discuss plot details.
Since nobody has written a review for this yet, I’ll be the first. I tried to watch it a long time ago but could not find a version with English subtitles (Even with my VPN, the official version is not subbed) so I forgot about it for a while. I decided to give it another go and found a version with Google translate English subtitles, which was a bit hard to understand at times but I could at least get an idea of what was happening. It’s a shame that it’s not licensed outside of Korea, since it’s a good series. The show is very downto earth and real, kind of like Aoi Hana. There’s no exaggeration, no dramatic music, and the characters feel like real people. It’s cute and wholesome and I think like it does a spectacular job of portraying what it’s like to be wlw in an environment where that sort of thing isn’t really accepted. The show also portrays loneliness and dissatisfaction in a painfully relatable way, I could really feel what the main characters were going through because they don’t spend much time telling you what’s going on, they show you instead. I think the producers did an amazing job at creating art that imitates reality so closely, and it’s kind of refreshing, even if [spoiler]the ending was disappointing (but that only brings it closer to reality, we don’t always get happy endings)[/spoiler]
The art is spectacular and so is the voice acting. The visual aesthetic they were going for kind of reminds me of violet evergarden, and the voice acting was mellow and soothing, without the soap opera-esque crying you normally find in these sorts of shows.
It’s a solid piece. 8/10