Simple Drama: Review of Nasu ~ Summer in Andalusia

And welcome back to Otaku no Video, as always. Thank you very much for joining me. Where today I am reviewing Nasu, Summer in Andalusia. This is an independently produced anime film, directed by an ex-Studio Ghibli staff member, about a bicycle race in Spain. Let me be clear, this movie is about the final hours of a professional bicycle race that's happening in Spain. There are no fantastic powers, no moe girls, no fan service, no holes into other dimensions. The main character, who's a professional bike racer, is not even a special professional bicycle racer. But Nasu is about far more than that. Without getting into spoilers, and much of the pleasure I got out of Nasu saw how the themes and philosophies emerged from the plot. So I'm not going to spoil any of that, so I can't get into too much detail here. But this is a movie about family, determination, courage, and loss. For example, if you took a Satoshi Kon film, removed all of the mind-bending questions about the nature of reality, but kept the meditations on human nature, and you'd get something like Nasu. So maybe something more like Millennium Actress or Tokyo Godfather. But Nasu sports the budget of a Mamoru Hosoda film. Not quite a Studio Ghibli budget. Then again, only Studio Ghibli can guarantee the kind of profits that get them those sorts of budgets. But Nasu certainly abounds with movement and detail. Bicycles have weight. You can see how the characters are leaning heavily into curves, and when they're tired, and you see the air shimmer with afternoon heat. Interestingly, the film moves at the same relatively unhurried pace as the race itself. Indeed, pace is a major theme of the film, as the competitors are themselves experts at the conservation and application of energy. Throughout the race, you have to determine when to push yourself and when to coast, when it's important to push ahead, and when it's important to conserve your energy. And you even have to do that on a higher level in terms of figuring out how far to push yourself on this race when you may have another one a week from now. Nasu has some of the strange plotless wonder element of some Studio Ghibli films, for example. I mean, a movie about a bicycle race should be boring since relatively little happens. I mean, it's a bunch of guys on bicycles and going backwards and forwards for hours. But the director manages to layer on subplot and tension and various different elements to the story without creating an overwhelming or uncomfortable sense of tension in the viewer. You can still very easily follow what's going on. So on one level, it's simple, guys on bikes. On another level, it's actually amazingly complex. I'm reminded of a moment near the end of the film, no spoilers, where the main character bikes up to a rocky outcropping overlooking a town and he stops his bike and gets off and just looks down at the town below him. It's a quiet moment of reflection that probably would never be in a Hollywood film because nothing's really going on and we spend some time getting up there and watching him do this. But it really sums up many of the film's themes. It's a moment of thought and it's a moment about who the character is and where he is and what he's thinking about right at that moment. As you can see, I'm having a somewhat difficult time really describing the movie in any sort of real accurate terms. There's in many ways a lot going on but those are really specific to the characters and what's established over the course of the film. Hayao Miyazaki has mentioned that the problem with making an adventure movie, for example, is that you either spend half the movie explaining the bad guys' motivations and why they're doing things and making them understandable to the audience or you just make them Nazis. So this film is all about understanding the characters and understanding motivations and so forth. So in that way, it's really a jewel. There's a lot to understand and a lot to see in the movie while at the same time what's actually happening on screen is pretty straightforward. I was extremely impressed with the film on that level and certainly the attention to detail in the animation helped that as well. Nasu is a movie about the simple things presented in a simple yet elegant and intricate way. Impressive.