The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Summer Pockets

In a lot of ways, Japanese visual novels feel like a midpoint between manga and anime. They are voiced, have color illustrations, and even have minor animations. However, this first episode of Summer Pockets shows off one of their biggest differences: the power of sunk costs.

If I bought the game version of Summer Pockets (on which this anime is based), I'd be compelled to put in a good couple of hours, to press on until I at least got to the twist. After all, I'd want to get my money's worth out of it. However, the anime version doesn't have this built-in lure to keep me watching, which proves to be a big problem for this show.

Simply put, we have the story of a young man running from some as-yet-undefined trouble in his life and escaping to an island for the summer with the excuse of sorting through his recently deceased grandmother's things. On the island, he meets women of different ages and… well, nothing.

This first episode is clearly building to something—a twist or revelation. I spent the whole episode waiting patiently for the other shoe to drop—and it never did. So I am left asking myself: Do I care enough to come back for more next week in the hopes that it will (and will be worth the wait)?

To be clear, I didn't dislike my time with Summer Pockets. The animation looks good, as does the general art design of the island. The music isn't half bad either. None of the characters is annoying, and I found the banter between them enjoyable.

However, in a season with a surprising number of series I actively want to watch week to week, I can't see myself tuning into this one. I don't have a lot of time I'm willing to gamble with. I gave Summer Pockets its chance to catch my interest, and it fumbled the ball.

I… have nothing to say about Summer Pockets. I watched the episode with my husband and spent a bit discussing it before I kissed him goodbye and headed off to work. The kids were in pretty good spirits overall, and one of my two co-teachers came back from spending last week sick. Now I'm home on my couch with my computer in my lap, and I have nothing to say.

It's not that I've forgotten what happened in it. I Takahara sighing over-the-top lines to himself on the boat and that he's there to clear out his grandmother's shed full of souvenirs. I the girl in the pool, the game of rock-paper-scissors with a small child, the girl with the water gun, and the girl napping under the tree. I feel nothing about it. It's a Kyoto Animation to give it some juice.

The thing is, at some point, Key realized they couldn't just adapt visual novels with route splits over and over. The Day I Became a God weren't good, they were at least interesting. These series had coherent, focused stories instead of the faffing about you tend to get in the common routes of older visual novels. This episode was nothing but faffing about, all dressed up in mediocre animation. There were a lot of moments that were written like jokes, but played so straight that I couldn't tell if they were supposed to be. Is it supposed to be funny when Takahara calls himself a “wounded bird of age”? It wasn't delivered like a joke, but it's too ridiculous to take seriously.

Oh look at that, this is now long enough to post. All done!

Working the Preview Guide beat as long as I have means that I've long since learned one of the cruelest lessons that comes with the territory: The worst shows to write about aren't even the truly terrible ones, but the ones that are so aggressively mediocre that coming up within something even remotely insightful to say about them is like trying to unscrew a rusted bolt from the bottom of a busted toilet. It's boring, monotonous, and soul-sucking work, but it must be done, and you don't get paid enough to hire a plumber.

In fact, look at that intro, right up there. I was sitting here at my desk and staring blankly at my computer screen for, like, ten straight minutes, just trying to come up with something to start this preview. The best I could do was use that toilet-repair analogy. More than any descriptions of the show's plot or production values, this anecdote should tell you exactly how I felt watching the first episode of Summer Pockets. The whole experience envelops you like some sluggish grey fog, coating your eyes with a thick film of half-baked character designs and clogging your ears with an endless stream of inane patter that amounts to nothing, nothing, and then more nothing. Our protagonist, Hairi, makes all of the impact of a single loaf of plain white bread falling gently out of a grocery bag and rolling quietly off the deck of a boat and into the ocean.

His primary character traits seem to be equal parts wistfulness and uncertainty, which express themselves so that Hairi becomes oddly insufferable, even though all he ever does is wander around and talk to various colored hairdos with female humanoids attached to them. There's a tall purple one, and a silver one in a bikini, and a smallish purple one in a hat, and they all say…things. About stuff. Of that, I am certain! If you put a gun to my head and demanded that I recount the substance of these conversations, though, I would ask you to simply make it quick and tell my wife I love her. This anime is an adaptation of a Key visual novel, I should mention, and it feels like the team got together and really tried to write a melancholy, introspective coming-of-age fantasy set in the backdrop of a rural island community…except nobody could figure out how to make any of that stuff interesting or memorable.

What we're left with, then, is a generic hodgepodge of early-2000s adventure game tropes that feel way past their prime, and they've been saddled onto the backs of a cast that possess all of the warm human appeal of a missing persons corkboard that you might find in the entryway of your local mega-mart. In case it wasn't clear by now, I don't recommend Summer Pockets. It's really quite boring, indeed.

Are you feeling nostalgic for the days of Key visual novel adaptations, the likes of Air or Clannad? Then, do I have good news for you: Summer Pockets is exactly that. Even though the game dates only to 2018, it feels like it could be from 2004. For some viewers, that's absolutely going to be a positive. The leisurely pace, hints of a tragic past or two, and mild harem-building all told me that this was likely to be based on one of Key's visual novels.

The downside is that if you're not a fan of any of those trademark aspects of Key's work, this may come across as…slow. The plot is mostly concerned with getting protagonist Hairi to the island where his grandmother lived and introducing a few of the many heroines he'll interact with. Thus far we've met the quirky girl who swims at night in her underwear (Shiroha), the loli who's a good cook (Umi), and three nameless girls: one in the lighthouse, one who has a vendetta against shirtless men, and one who immediately accuses Hairi of misconduct even though he saved her from falling over. It's so familiar that you might have to check your calendar to make sure we didn't go back in time twenty years.

This is only the barest start at a story, although there are some hints about at least Hairi's past. He apparently used to be in the swim club before what looks like a near-drowning, which will likely influence his life on Torishinojima. In no small part, that's probably because he's currently on an island, surrounded by water, but since Shiroha's also trying to improve her swimming. Hairi won't it to Umi that he was a swimmer, despite photographic evidence, but he also can't stop himself from giving Shiroha desperately needed pointers. It's to the animation's credit that we can tell Shiroha's not swimming well; at first, I thought it was just poorly done before realizing that no, it was clunky on purpose, which was a very nice touch. Other little bits and pieces are also impressive, such as the old woman who appears at awkward times (this is a real thing that happens in small towns) and a scene where Hairi's narration is interrupted by him getting drenched by a rogue wave.

Summer Pocket is most likely to appeal to fans of Key. It really feels adrift in time, like a show that should have aired twenty years ago. But if that's the nostalgia you're looking for, give it a try, though those looking for a bit more plot should be aware that you aren't likely to find it here.