Summer Ghost was a treat. Honestly, I’m shocked I didn’t talk about it before: I was fortunate enough to screen it at AX a few years back, and I knew from that I had to get the home video release. But I guess I wasn’t doing daily reports that year, because I’ve yet to mention it on the blog, meaning it stands as one of the big incentives for me doing this film club.
And I know, cat’s out of the bag, I thought it was good. At not even 40 minutes long, this is going to be a pretty quick review, so I might as well spoil what’s at the end of the spoilers, at least a little.
Summer Ghost begins with three friends, or rather initially three young people who have gathered together to attempt to beckon a ghost. These are artist Tomoya, schoolgirl Aoi, and sporty boy Ryou. We see them meet up, becoming fast friends as they discuss the facts of rumors about this “Summer Ghost”, and then go about trying to conjure her by burning sparklers at dusk in a particular spot.
Sure enough, the ghost appears. Her manifestation seems to slow time massively, leaving their sparklers still burning, but with glacial slowness. Said ghost, Ayane, is a mostly polite and soft-spoken young lady who reveals that not everyone can see her: all three of our living leads must have given serious consideration to their own deaths.
This first encounter ends shortly, but the kids are all three shaken. We see their circumstances, as Aoi endures horrid bullying, Tomoya is pretty much forced to give up his artistic dreams by his controlling mother, and Ryou… he’s not so much suicidal as ill, and it’s clear that his condition is bad and probably getting worse.
Over the summer, Tomoya finds himself going back to Ayane. Seemingly charmed by this encounter, Ayane teaches him how to have an out-of-body experience, flying around and exploring a silent, empty version of the world where things like solidity are just guidelines. Tomoya also learns that contrary to the legend that summoned her, Ayane did not commit suicide: she was murdered, and her body has never been found. This is something of unfinished business for her and she asks Tomoya if he wouldn’t mind helping search for her body, which should be buried in a suitcase somewhere.
Tomoya accepts the plot and we get a sequence of searching the world, doubling as dates for our leads, both getting to experience a side of life that, for different reasons, they were otherwise denied. She does seem to want to set Tomoya on a better track as well, but Ayane does overall accept his presence and help.
As their possible time together dwindles, including with Tomoya having to tell off his mother, Tomoya becomes desperate. He calls Aoi and Ryou back to help canvass the city, but Ryou initially doesn’t want to accept since he’s a little preoccupied with the fact that he doesn’t exactly have a future, which comes out to the others here.
Frantically burning through sparkler after sparkler, Tomoya tries to do it on his own, but just as his stash runs out, Ryou and Aoi (who convinced him to help out) arrive with plenty more. They join the search and eventually discover the site where the suitcase containing Ayane’s remains is buried. Thus, they say their goodbyes to Ayane and resolve to bring the matter to light in the real world.
This they do, with the others getting Tomoya over the fence into the junkyard where it’s buried. But as he touches the suitcase in its shallow grave, Tomoya has a spooky experience encountering Ayane, except she’s singing a very different tune, urging him to give up and accept drifting off into the world of spirits. Tomoya almost caves, but the voices of his friends in the real world shake him and he realizes that this apparition isn’t Ayane, but the part of himself that wanted to give up on life. He rejects the shade, finishes digging, and confirms the sad truth sealed inside.
We don’t see too much of the fallout. Ryou is still sick, Aoi is fighting back her bullying at least a little (we see her produce an umbrella to ward off a dumped water prank that hit her in the past, and call the pranksters out) Tomoya seems to have the backbone to pursue art, starting with using one last canvass he hid away to create a portrait of Ayane, and Ayane’s distinctive brooch at least is delivered to her mother, so presumably the rest will be discovered and the case solved.
A good deal of this is learned in a scene that bookends the picture: the three friends together, one year later, sparklers lit. But we realize that the sparklers are already in slow-mode. Ayane was strongly implied to pass on, so that means the ghost this time is Ryou, to whom Aoi and Tomoya are saying some late goodbyes: his condition was terminal, and he only managed to claw on to life until spring.
Thus, the picture ends with well wishes for those who are alive, who know that life may not get easier but who have at least gained the will to face it.
So, that’s the plot. But while it’s really good and effective, especially given its limited running time, it’s almost not the star of the show. You might notice that one of the credits on Summer Ghost is one “loundraw”. The film is pretty proud to be his cinematic debut, and he’s as Original Creator, Character Designer, and Director. Loundraw’s background is as an illustrator, and he’s pretty well-known for his exquisite use of color and attention to wondrous backgrounds, making even mundane scenes look pretty magical between the pallet, light, and depth of field. His human characters, as if to contrast this, tend to be on the simpler end. They don’t look bad, but they’re not often going to fool you into thinking they’re anything other than a drawing. Which, perhaps ironically, tends to make them pop when placed against the gorgeous scenes they inhabit.
You could probably make a mountain out of molehills like Tomoya being a budding artist when the creator is in visual arts, but more importantly is how much of that art is convinced to live and move in this picture. The mundane scenes look astounding, and the mystical scenes still manage to kick it up to another level. I know I’d be exaggerating if I went and said something like “you could frame any still from this movie” but it’s darn close; at the very least you could probably get an art print out of every scene in the picture.
Of course, some of the most notable stuff is when Tomoya and Ayane are flying around in the spirit world. There, going through a solid object or especially under the ground is visually likened to swimming through water, with scenes sometimes abruptly cutting between sunset skies and light filtering through a phantasmal sea, with a few even juxtaposing the two directly.
That said, this isn’t just motion art. The visuals are used to tell a story – a good one – and create an appropriate mood for what are mostly quite conversations between the characters to land as emotional powerhouses. There’s a certain dead horse I could beat regarding Summer Ghost managing as much as it does with its premise in 37 minutes, but I’ll spare it this time (if you know, you know.)
If I have any complaints about Summer Ghost, it’s that it could have stood to be… just a little bit longer. This is clearly a passion project seeing as it’s coming from an extremely talented artist moving into a different field with a studio that’s otherwise only done five minute or less music videos and the like, so it seems pretty likely that there was a hard cap on what they had the time or money for without sacrificing quality. That leads to us, frankly, missing a few transitions and explanations in the end. How did Tomoya reckon with his mother? What did delivering the brooch to Ayane’s mom mean? Did the authorities ever find the suitcase? Ayane asked Tomoya to help her give her mother closure so I guess the news of Ayane’s death probably got through by that but we only see a mysteriously delivered brooch. We also probably could have done with just one or two more scenes with the living friends being or becoming friends so it’s not just the Tomoya show between their first encounter with Ayane and their last, and so that we feel the bond that ultimately mentally and emotionally saves them in the end. I don’t need the movie to hold my hand and walk me through everything, but I do feel that there were just a couple corners cut in terms of what needed to be scripted versus what could actually fit in the movie that the creators had the resources to make.
When all is said and done, the grade I have for Summer Ghost is an A. If you haven’t seen it, it’s not long, so you should go and check it out when you’re ready for something melancholy.