A long time ago in a very different marketplace, I found myself close to giving up on anime. While I had grown up being a fan of Robotech and getting introduced to anime through it and Macross, the late 80’s and early 90’s in terms of legal releases and most bootlegs that were out there at comic book shops or conventions were big and violent action pieces or highly sexualized projects, including hentai. I had gotten into what the few distributors were bringing out but it was quickly becoming fairly boring. There were two things that kept me from abandoning anime back then. The first was the first couple of tapes of Urusei Yatsura, especially the second movie, and the other was the Kimagure Orange Road OVAs that were released and followed up with this, a feature film.
Being a fan of Kimagure Orange Road wasn’t easy. You had that small taste through the half dozen OVAs that AnimEigo brought out but we wouldn’t see the forty-eight episode TV series until something like a decade later. But those OVAs, with their simple comedy and touches of proper romance, were simply outclassed for me with the arrival of the movie, “I Want to Return to That Day.” With the previous projects giving us plenty of psychic love-comedy material with our lead in Kasuga who has abilities that he has to keep secret as his family is all like that, there was plenty to like and the taste of it through the OVAs was delightful. It wasn’t like the other shows out at the time with the cyberpunk leanings, ultraviolence, or the various weak adaptations of video games.
The movie, however, changed everything for me. While I expected more romantic comedy material along the lines of the OVA episodes, what I got was a closing statement on the project as a whole (at least until someone turns the Kimagure Orange College fanfic into a legitimate project) that did something that a lot of shows in general never do. It gave us a definitive ending. Romantic comedies tend to exist in the realm of will they or won’t they because it feels like so many of the writers can’t figure out how to do the comedy that exists within a relationship and all that stems from it. That can go on only so long before you need something to change as it wears out its welcome. And this property has the advantage in that through’ the film it works on the end of the school career for our lead in Kasuga as well as Madoka, who is the same age and is his true love. A true love that he hasn’t been able to reveal his feelings to because the conceit of the series in that the younger Hikaru sorta kinda accidentally nabbed him first.
There’s a lot of history to the show with all that came before and the manga it’s based on, but the movie has the feeling of someone putting away their childish things and growing up in full. Kasuga and Madoka are going through testing and applications to move onto college and that’s drawing a good deal of their time. And it’s something that Hikaru, just a year younger, struggles with because she hasn’t had the opportunity to really grow up yet. While she’s been wary of Madoka from time to time, the two friends mostly hashed things out over the series so that there’s a good balance while fans get frustrated with Kasuga’s inability to make a true decision due to his fear of hurting, well, everyone.
The movie finally reaches that point where he has to make that choice. He can’t just go along to get along anymore. With the reality of life moving forward, the true realization that Madoka is the one that he loves, he deals with this in the way that sadly many young men do – badly. Hikaru’s not free of guilt in all of this because of how she spent her time manipulating him over the series but there’s also the truth that her youthful lack of experience feels real here. She’s earnest and honest with her feelings and every pain that she feels comes pouring out of her because she cannot understand. Hell, that happens to plenty of adults, myself included, with the pain of rejection. It truly doesn’t get easier. Hikaru’s overreactions frustrated me a bit when I had first seen the film but with time and experience it’s something that I understand more and in some ways have felt various shades of it as well. Hikaru’s pain throughout this is earned and true and while there’s an element of stalker to some of what she does as it goes on, even some of that is understandable with the way that friends she’s had for a few years end up essentially freezing her out.
My earlier viewings of the film, coming from the OVAs, always had me firmly in the Madoka camp because Hikaru’s personality was one that didn’t agree with me to some extent, as it wasn’t something that I felt would work for me. Madoka was the one that had the beauty, the cool, the style, and the smarts to back it all up with a good sense of humor. But there’s also an element to her that’s broken that makes it hard to connect with her. She’s an idealized woman but one that I found to be a lot more complex once I got to see the series itself and appreciated her and her faults all the more. Similar to Kasuga, she’s not free of blame and guilt with how things unfold here because while she has her own things she’s dealing with on the home front she’s also been in denial about the true feelings she has for Kasuga because like him she didn’t want to hurt Hikaru, her only other real friend. But as she sees things changing with her sister and her husband there’s a sense of understanding more of what needs to be done to be a proper grownup. She’s not playing at it in a way but she’s learning by example and executing it with mixed results.
Revisiting the film after so many years, and on its own as I haven’t had the chance to revisit everything that came before (there’s a sequel film that’s not worth checking out), was definitely an interesting experience. There are things that have stuck with me over the years that really made an impression on me. I’m a big fan of the character designs and just the tone of the film in how it plays out, giving everyone their time and working through the emotions of it all. It was this film that really got me to pay attention to character designers with Akemi Takada long being a favorite. There’s a lot of innocence to it and typical high school drama, such as Hikaru giving Kasuga a kiss to cheer him up and Madoka finding out from her, which has her upset at Kasuga because it changes the delicate balance they’ve all existed with for some time. Takada’s designs lets the emotion comes through wonderfully here and as we get a range of them, including some brutally honest heartache, it’s something that still strikes a chord.
Music was always a big part of the property as well with lots of catchy songs and multiple soundtracks released over the years. The film struck a particular place for me as in-film we have Kasuga and Hikaru listening to a new CD he got from Kanako Wada. Wada’s works show up elsewhere in the property as well and the lyrics and music are just beautiful, things that got me to import the music back when I listened to a lot of Japanese music. The blend of such things in the film to help accent the mood and bring to life the emotions of the characters is critical in several scenes. At the same time, however, we get a lot of strong scenes where it’s kept quiet, keeping the music from overwhelming the moment, and letting us just listen to the characters talk and being drawn into them, such sa Madoka and Hikaru walking along the riverbank together after Hikaru discovered the picture of Kasuga in Madoka’s room. The quiet of that walk, together and separate, which then draws into Wada’s soft lyrics and their meaning does a lot of the heavy lifting in a wonderful way.
By today’s anime standards, the film isn’t anything that will really register for a lot of viewers in terms of designs or actual animation quality. There are things here that in the early 90’s just floored me with how different anime was from Western animation and is still a big part of why I enjoy anime in general. I still remember the first time I saw the scene here where it began to rain, just a little and then a lot, and admiring the quality of it (more so on the LaserDisc release) and simply appreciating the effort made to such a scene because it had a huge impact on the emotions of the moment. Similarly, when Madoka makes her confession with Kasuga, it’s such simple animation by today’s standards but it’s sold so strongly by the performances, the little pieces to the animation with Jingoro the cat moving about, the light touch of the fireworks, that it carries more weight than some far more beautiful shows that are empty of emotion for me.
I have little hope that Kimagure Orange Road will resonate for most fans of the current generation. Part of me is glad for that because it becomes a little treasure for those like myself, something we enjoy immensely, safe and secure in that. At the same time part of me really does wish more people would become engaged with these older projects and what they did because there’s so much to enjoy there. Especially a project like this that takes something that went on for quite some time and had a following and did the unthinkable – it had the characters make choices that hurt someone else (and fans of the hurt character) and moved forward from there. It’s that which sticks with me the most and makes me wish more shows had the courage to do that, to be messy and complicated, to tell the tales of actual romance with all of its ups and downs.
A film like this lets me return to that day where I had first seen it and how surprising it was, both in the choices made and that it actually did it. I hold out hope for a high-quality release of all of this franchise again someday domestically because it does hold a special place for many fans. Until then, these characters reside in my heart more than ever with all the pain and heartache I’ve felt and the messiness that comes from love. I’m hard-pressed to name another show that impacted me as much as this one, which really allows it to stand the test of time for me.
