Back in 2022, I encountered a 40-minute anime named Summer Ghost. This film made it very difficult to choose my favourite film of that year. The power of anime is a funny thing. Even now we have several opinions on anime that make it seem childish or meant for kids. This opinion can be reflected through many animes but to shine a light on the beauty of anime, Summer Ghost is the tale of love and loss that you need to see. But sadly gems like this one isn't what today's anime industry tries to achieve.
The constant stream of carbon copies in the anime industry sometimes frustrates me to the point I have to take a break from all anime. It renders me physically unable to watch any anime for a while. It's not that I burst out in an overly dramatic emotional screaming match with myself, but it's more like a silent suffering and mourning of what could've been.
The precise problem with all this is that I can't seem to enjoy any anime that doesn't bother to even try to be original or to at the very least reach for some difference to set them apart. Instead, they're content with making remakes with different character designs that still follow an irritatingly bland and familiar formula for making an anime.
Summer Ghost brings a different problem altogether. Its problem is that it's exactly the opposite of everything I just mentioned. It's original but familiar, not too similar, but not alienatingly different. This film is exactly what the anime industry as it stands, is not doing.
This anime is a sublime achievement in storytelling. In an anime industry so devoid of this type of anime, Summer Ghost brings to the screen an anime with a distinct visual language and a narrative written with care and effort and not for the fan service of over-indulgent, over-commercialised anime content lovers who call themselves "fans".
The director, loundraw an animator and illustrator better known for his work on Josee, The Tiger and The Fish and I Want To Eat Your Pancreas, brings us his first directorial project and what a banger it is.
loundraw describes his style as "lacking detail". The illustration adopts the motto "less is more" which can sometimes do more harm than good, but in this case, it perfectly encapsulates the longing and lack of a life if you will that serves as the thematic basis of Summer Ghost. The simply drawn characters with the almost incomplete colouring give the film a much more unique visual language than I thought it had after seeing it only once. This, I noticed only on my second viewing of the film.
An anime that has enough depth and range that needs to be watched and rewatched to fully grasp is a rarity in today's world, so much so that I can't even recall any anime of recent times that requires such commitment from an audience.
"The Summer Ghost Problem" is one that I am more than happy to have. Many will not like this problem, saying that it has no story, no plot or even unimpressive animation. In my humble opinion, I think too many anime fans have become so used to a "bigger means better" approach concerning the animation of an anime. If it hasn't got a high resolution, fine details into character drawings and big fight or flight moments, it automatically isn't as good as it could've been. I understand that anime is a visual medium like film, but my question is...
When did we start not caring about the story?
Mohnish Rajakumaran is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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