Hourglass of Summer

Rating:
Summary: Another great interactive anime DVD, but needs passwords
Review: From the makers of PHANTOM OF INFERNO comes this, an interactive anime teenage love story with a dash of surreal sci-fi.

You play the role of Kotaro Seno, ordinary high school guy who is looking forward to summer vacation. Kotaro lives next door to Ai Senou, a girl your age and life-long childhood friend. Ai lives with her father (her mother passed away some time ago,) who works at his own home-owned fish resteraunt Uomasa, at his own house. Ai is ditsy, extreamly clumsy and a crybaby (say, could she be related to Sailor Moon?) yet she is also the manager of the boy's soccor club, though probably because she'll gladly take care of whatever tasks they ask of her, such as laundry. Ai often asks Kotaro for rides on his bike so as not to be late for school. She also comes over to his house every night to play his racing video game, even though he always beats her.

At school Kotaro is a member of the boxing club, pressured into it by his other friend, emotionally surpressed Tokieda Takeshi, boxing champ and president of the club. (The club is minscule, consisting of only one more member other than Takeshi and Kotaro.) And there is Tomomi Yanagihara, a rather unconventional biology teacher who also takes a deep interest in supernatural phenomenon. She is wont to doing things like wacking her students on the back of the head with the corner of her attendence board for standing out in the middle of the hall and calling them names like "stupid losers" when she gets annoyed with them.

The most popular girl in school is Kaho Serizawa, drama club member and daughter of a famos, rich painter who lives on top of the hill in a grandious mansion. Beautiful, intelligent and well-poised, Kaho is sought after by every guy in school, including Kotaro. He yearns desperately to go out with her, but can't even work up the nerve to talk to her.

At the student's favorite after school hangout, Paradise Cafe, an American diner-themed resteraunt, Kotaro discusses with his friends his desire to ask out Kaho, and they tell him she's out of his league. He asks Ai to introduce him to Kaho, and she reluctantly agrees.

Later that night, the night of July 14th, (in Japan summer vacation is only one month long,) as he's walking home, Kotaro finds himself being stalked. It turns out to be a young woman in a trench coat, hat and shades. Upon accidentally running into her, she spills a stange powder on him that smells like bathroom cleaner. She runs off and he goes home where Ai awaits. He beats her at let another round of video game racing, and then she goes home and he prepars for bed. Then suddenly he is assaulted by the strange fragrence of the powder, as well as rainbow-like colors and an odd ringing sound. The next morning he wakes up and goes to school, and finds that, increadably, it's already September 1st. He learns that he has indeed been dating Kaho, but now the whole school is in mourning because, tragically she was killed in a terrible accident just the day before. Kotaro suddenly finds himself jumping back and fourth through time between the days of July 14th. and September 1st., always when he goes to bed and always greeted by the ringing, the smells and the colors. Sometimes he goes a couple days passing time normally, then unexpectedly jumps forward a couple days or back several days. He can never tell for certain when he'll jump or to what day he'll arrive in. Can he beat fate and save Kaho from her untimely end? Who was the woman he ran into? Can Tomoi help him?

The story was excellent and the characters were all likeable and intresting, and I wanted to see what happened to them how things turned out based on what desicions I made. But now here's one major design flaw: there are NO passwords. Meaning, in other words, that every time you restart the game/story, you have to begin all the way back at the beginning. Passwords are the interactive DVD equivelent to a scene selection. You make certain decisions, and every now and then you come to a screen that shows a certain password of how to get to that point in the story after making those desicions. Begin at the beginning and make different desicions and you get different passwords, since your different choices have different consequences later on. Here, however, there are now passwords to be found. Couple that with the fact that the story actually takes sometime to tell all the way through (the first time I played through an entire story from beginning to end I ended up making a grand total of 58 choices,) and you should be prepaired to devote the better part of a day playing through this disk. On the plus side, it is possible to fast-forward through until you get to the next option, so if you have to start all over again before completing the story you can fast-forward to each option, making the same choices as you did last time, until you reach the point you left off.

In short, this DVD is still highly recomended, but it REALLY needs passwords.

Rating:
Summary: A Midsummer's Dream
Review: I bought this out of interest, but was turned off when it didn't have english. Still, I got into it, and found it was a beautiful, charming story, accentuated by little bits of drama, comedy, and ultimately, tradgedy.

The graphics are top notch. Truly, an art form in animation, gorgeous to look at and very gripping in their presentation. these alone convey the emotions of the characters, further brought to life by the vocals. Like most "choose your own adventure" stories, this one allows you to literally change the future of the main character's life. Passwords, the DVD's equivalent to scene selection, can be accessed by pushing the menu button, and this will give an eight-digit password to that point in the story.

A word to (and from) the wise: plan on spending a good deal of time with this DVD. There are many plot twists and minute changes that can alter the future, for better or for worse. I myself have played through this DVD only once so far, but it still took me nearly two days, and that was with the unhappy ending, which ends halfway through the game.

Despite its minor flaws, it is a sweet, compelling tale of love, devotion, and conflicting emotions, all bundled together throught the magic of Japanese artwork. All in all, if you like either Anime, or even the genre, you wont be dissapointed by this magical story of a Summer of pure Fantasy!