Tunnel to Summer Exit of Goodbyes is a HUGE Disappointment

Do you want to use this umbrella? It looked like the exact mix of niche melodrama that I specialized on reviewing at the beginning of this channel if you're new, and honestly, I couldn't wait to see it. Without going into too much detail at this point, it certainly might have been something, but it definitely was not a lot of things. Tunnel to Summer Exit of Goodbye centers around two characters, Kaoru Tono and Hanashiro Anzu. Not that there's a lot of characters in this movie. In fact, there's only five named characters that actually appear on screen, with three But anyway, Kaoru Tono is your main male lead. From the beginning of the film, it's very apparent that Tono is going through a lot. His sister died for reasons he blames himself for, and following that, his parents had a divorce where he now lives with his drunk, abusive father. Tono at the beginning of the film meets the female lead, Hanashiro Anzu, at a train station where they exchange some words and Tono lends Hanashiro his umbrella. After returning home to his drunk father, ensues a heated confrontation, and Tono runs away from his house and finds a mysterious tunnel, known as the Urashima Tunnel. This tunnel, apparently famous in that particular town, is rumored to grant wishes in exchange for time. Essentially how the tunnel works is that once a person steps into the tunnel, time outside the tunnel speeds up rapidly, while the person inside the tunnel only feels that a few seconds had passed. Think Miller's Planet from Interstellar, except that instead of an entire planet where it's sort of scientifically plausible, it's just some sort of magic tunnel that can grant wishes in return. Exploring the tunnel for the first time, Tono realizes that this is the infamous Urashima Tunnel, as the tunnel resurrects his pet bird he had lost many years ago. Because of this, Tono realizes that he can fix his messed up life, as the tunnel could potentially resurrect his sister and grant him the life he always longed for. The following day, Tono returns to the tunnel, only to be followed by Hanashiro. After some brief explanation, Hanashiro realizes that she also has a wish that only the tunnel can grant. For now, a bit of context on Hanashiro, or else the rest of the film would literally not make any sense. Hanashiro Anzu was a recent transfer student from Tokyo, who was sent to this small town by her parents in order to calm down, because she wanted to pursue her dream career of becoming a mangaka, which her parents had greatly opposed. Hanashiro's wish that she wanted the tunnel to grant, was that she wanted to gain the skills to become special in order for her to make it in the manga world. Following this introduction comes a weird time skip sequence about a couple months, where Hanashiro and Tono work out how the tunnel works, the time difference between inside and outside the tunnel, and their potential plans of using the tunnel to achieve their goals. Over the course of the time skip sequence and afterwards, Tono and Hanashiro get to know each other better and open up to each other. They learn about each other's ambitions and dreams, and finally decide on a date to enter the tunnel to both get what they want. However, over the course of the two getting to know each other, Hanashiro reveals her dream of becoming a mangaka to Tono, where Tono tells her that she's already got that talent and that bit of special that she was looking for. Following this, Hanashiro submits her work into a publisher and actually received a return call with the potential of an offer. This causes a bit of internal struggle within Hanashiro, and at that point Tono makes it clear to himself that he has to enter the tunnel alone, as Hanashiro has already achieved what she wanted. On the day that they promised each other to enter the tunnel together, Tono enters the tunnel alone without telling Hanashiro, but sends her one last text to tell her to continue pursuing her dreams of becoming a mangaka. After this, the story sort of splits between Hanashiro and Tono's point of view, and thus brings another sort of time skip sequence. Tono, being in the tunnel, found his sister and achieved the happiness that he always thought he wanted. However, within the tunnel, for some magical reason, he receives all the texts that Hanashiro had sent him over all the years that had passed outside. In response to this, Tono realizes that what he truly wanted was to move on and actually spend time with Hanashiro, as she showed him that there were more things to live for in this world. In the real world, Hanashiro ends up pursuing the dream that she always wanted of becoming a mangaka, but never forgot about Tono. Hanashiro ends up returning to the place where her and Tono met for the first time and cries reminiscing about the past. There, Hanashiro receives a text from Tono that Tono had sent after he left his dream reality within the tunnel, and Hanashiro then finds Tono inside the tunnel. There, they finally reunite and begin their lives anew together. With that all over, I truly think that Tunnel to Summer Exit of Goodbyes had something going for it to make it good. Now before anyone goes down in the comments right now and furiously types, Hey Mikey, the plot is unoriginal, kind of boring, and is your typical run-of-the-mill romance film with that Makoto Shinkai Your Name type worldbuilding, how does it even have the capacity to be potentially good? And to that, I say, yeah, you're right. But that's what these films are all about. And personally, although I haven't seen anything that is good yet in this genre, I believe that that doesn't stop them from being inherently potentially being good. In fact, I think that Tunnel to Summer Exit of Goodbyes had decent enough foundations to be just that. During the parts that were serious, the film is truly a treat to watch. The atmosphere during the heated confrontation with Tono and his father sucked the air straight out of the room while I was watching it. And the wide-angle shots with Tono and Hanashiro together truly made for some of the best-looking scenes I've seen in a while, especially when they contrast with scenes later in the film that truly exemplify Hanashiro's loneliness without Tono. This is particularly highlighted in the train station scenes, where all three times it was Another scene that I want to personally highlight is the aquarium scene where the two characters open up to each other. The whale's appearance in the background when the two talk about their dark pasts really adds a sense of atmosphere to the film that I did not expect and was a really nice touch. Even the happy scenes were done well. In fact, I think the festivals part of the film was genuinely enough to make me smile and feel a bit nice inside. But unfortunately, even with all that, with all those amazing scenes, amazing pieces of voice acting, and an amazing soundtrack, Tunnel to Summer Exit of Goodbyes falls short in arguably something that is the most important part of any piece of entertainment, the string that ties these beautiful scenes and ideas together into one coherent film. The pacing. God, the pacing sucked. So much. The film starts out slow with great introductory scenes that highlight the characters well and pique the viewer's interest, but that becomes utterly ruined by the timeskip sequences where the film literally glosses over entire plot points and more, such as the Hanashiro bullying incident. Ordinarily, this wouldn't even be a plot point, but this bully gets an entire scene in the timeskip sequence just to never be seen again. After this point, the film just sort of becomes a blur. Stuff happens, then more stuff happens, and nothing is really even built on or expanded upon. And when the ending hits, it just sort of comes out of nowhere. Sure, the film gives you a bit of time to become emotionally invested in these characters, but it feels really half-baked. Overall, Tunnel to Summer Exit of Goodbyes feels like a series of truly exceptional scenes and ideas that were sort of dumped together to make a somewhat cohesive story. It just didn't feel like I truly got to the point where I cared enough about each of the characters to be emotionally invested to trigger a significant emotion out of me, which is arguably some of the most important parts of these sorts of films. However, I think the movie would have truly benefited from being longer and definitely more fleshed out. I went into this movie not expecting much, or even anything at all, and I still managed to leave quite disappointed. And with that, that's Tunnel to Summer Exit of Goodbyes.