A unique work that is too stoic and highbrow?　What Director Tomohisa Taguchi Tried to Do with the Animated Feature Film "Tunnel to Summer, Exit for Goodbye" [Watching the Animation Industry No.92

A mysterious one-summer love story featuring high school boys and girls, ...... may remind you of a typical coming-of-age anime, but "Tunnel to Summer, Exit Good-bye" is a frighteningly precise, sensitive, and well-centered film! The film is about a boy who loses hope in his life due to a past accident. Kaoru Tohno, a high school boy who has lost hope in life due to a past accident, meets Anzu Hanashiro, a female transfer student with the same deficiency, and the two happen to discover the "Urashima Tunnel," which is rumored to be a place where people can "regain what they have lost. Kaoru and Anzu, who are not particularly close, cooperate with each other to get what they want, and they explore the Urashima Tunnel alone, but at the same time, they face an unexpected situation. ......
The film has a quiet and sad sentiment that is reminiscent of Nobuhiko Obayashi's films of the 1980s, such as "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and "Transfer Student. Director Tomohisa Taguchi, who has gained experience in entertainment films such as "The Yin-Yang Master of the Twins" (2016) and "Akudama Drive" (2020), seems to have taken a cautious and bold approach to directing in order to explore a completely new genre.

Stoically narrowing down the episodes resulted in a "film with no dull spots.

─ I think this is a very solidly made animation, but was it difficult for you to make it?

Taguchi: ......It was hard work (laughs). (laughs) I realized how hard it is to seriously animate an everyday play. It is impossible to make 12 episodes in one cool season with the quality of this play. Even when we are sitting down like this, we unconsciously relax and put our weight on one side of the body. However, when we draw, we sit in a neat manner. I told the staff, "No, no, you don't usually sit like that, do you?" I told the staff, "No, no, you don't usually sit like that," but strangely enough, they didn't fix it. I felt that it would be easier to make an action film with lots of beams, explosions, and fist fights all the time.


─ ─ The mood of this "Tunnel to Natsu, Sayonara no Exit" (hereafter, "Natsu-ton") is completely opposite to that of such flashy anime, isn't it?

Taguchi: I don't mean to make fun of you by any means, but this is not a work with coquettish girls with waving hair and swinging skirts. Everyone sees the casual movements of human beings on a daily basis, so if there is even the slightest sense of discomfort, the viewer is likely to blank out and say, "This is a lie, isn't it? In that sense, the process of creating "NATTON" was a thorny road. As a result, we ended up with an anime with a stoic atmosphere, but that was only possible because of the original work. I don't think it would have been possible to create an anime with such a bitter and quiet atmosphere using an original project.

───What was your impression of the original novel of the same title by Hachimoku Meimei (published by Shogakukan's "Gaga Bunko")?

Taguchi: The producer handed it to me as a "light novel," but I was able to read it as a general novel without thinking of it as a novel, so I thought it would work well as an animated feature film. The illustrations by Kukka-san were not glittering, but suited the calm taste of the original work. I felt that if I used this style for the animation, it would blend in with the world I wanted to depict.

─ ─ When I read the original work, I found it surprisingly lively. In the anime, the atmosphere is chic and calm. ......

Taguchi: That's simply because of the length of the story. We had the goal of keeping the story as short as possible, so we decided not to use a monologue. In the original work, the main character Kaoru is portrayed as a character with a gap between his outer appearance and inner life, but in the film, we decided to follow what happens outside of him in a documentary style and focused on only two people, Kaoru and Anzu, in terms of human relationships. Thanks to the fact that I did not include this or that element, I think the film became a film with no detours that did not interrupt my concentration. The producer told me that he liked the fact that there were no dalliances.