Umibe no Étranger

//may contain some light spoilers Umibe no Étranger is so much more to me than just another BL story. It kinda reminds me od Doukyuusei, with its storyline and characters and showing the more sweet and realistic depiction od same-sex love. As a LGBT person myself, I love stories surrounding these topics but it's so hard for me to find an anime that would satisfy me. Mostly, because most yaoi/BL stories are overly sexualized and show same-sex attraction as a fetish. L' Étranger is different in that case. It's good to hear the word 'gay' being used in the show and see a character identyfying assuch. Sure, Mio still follows the 'I'm in love with a person, not their gender' trope but from what I've understood from the manga sequel, he's still unable to have sex and fall in love with a girl so he might have some identity issues. Besides, there are people who are bisexual with a strong preference for the opposite gender but they still feel same-sex attraction. I'm not against that, what has always annoyes me is the fact that it's been overused in BL stories. The relationship between Mio and Shun is very real written. It feels real, there are no big fireworks and their dillemas are actually relatable for me. The whole story is not centered around sex and we can actually see their daily struggles with life. Shun's high school life was well depicted and I wish we could see more of it. There is no stereotypical seme/uke dynamic between these two. They're both equals in their relationship. The movie was quite short and I wish it was at least 90 minutes instead of an hour. The art was beautiful, they really brought the climate from the manga to the big screen. The colours were vivid, the background were detailed. The voice acting was amazing and their voices sounded just like I imagined them in the manga. The thing with L'Étranger is that it's actually a very simple story. But I feel like we need more stories like this or Doukyuusei with LGBT characters. It's so refreshing for me to actually enjoy a simple romance between two guys, no fetishization, no characters dying. Just a pure story about love. I really recommed it to anyone who's looking for this kind of story. Trust me, it's definitely worth that hour of your time.

The setting of Umibe no Étranger has always held me in a vice-grip. An island surrounded by the blue ocean, the residents are dressed in billowy clothing. The flowers are bright and blooming. It is the essence of summer. It's the place which you read in a book and then proceed to ache for. Or rather, in this case, the place which you see in a manga and then proceed to ache for. This overwhelming feeling of being in the moment presents itself perfectly (thank you, Kanna Kii), so much so, that you want to be living through it instead. I believe the best mediashows itself in whether or not the viewers wish they could be a part of the story. Mio and Shun contrast each other. Shun is a quiet novelist who, despite having known his sexuality before Mio, still hasn't come to terms with it. Mio on the other hand is young, carefree, and is comfortable with openly confessing his love to Shun. They balance each other out. Mio learns from Shun's family situation, while Shun learns from Mio that he shouldn't be embarrassed about their love. There is nothing wrong with expressing feelings for someone of the same gender or sex. And Shun, having lived his life with this affecting him, comes to terms for the first time, that, this is how he is, and that's perfectly okay. I will admit that the pacing of Umibe no Étranger is rather fast. The pacing is the weakest part of both the anime adaptation and the original manga. Before you know it, it's over. This may have faired better pacing-wise if it had been split up into a four-part OVA. The art. I'll just say it. It's great. They did Kanna Kii's style justice. The animation is smooth, the backgrounds and coloring are beautiful. There is nothing to nitpick. It's above average, probably even ABOVE above average. Studio Hibari did a wonderful job. Now, for what I am head over heels for - the sound (by Eiko Morikawa) and original music (composed by Mina Kubota). None of the sound effects felt out of place - the blowing wind and stretching sea made the setting even more immersive. And what takes the cake is the music. Beautiful piano pieces, that, whenever they started playing during a scene I would focus on them instead because I didn't expect them to be so... good. Mina Kubota did an amazing job with the music. The ending song is equally addicting; it is all I imagined a song representing Mio and Shun to be. This attitude also goes towards the voice actors, who did a great job with bringing these two to life (along with Sakurako, Eri, Suzu, and most particularly a young version of Mio, who actually had a child voice acting him). Umibe no Étranger is a story that bases itself around coming to terms with who you are and your situation. It is a story about growing up and basking in pure first love. The animation, sound, music, and setting all bring this movie together. And albeit it may be a little fast-paced, it surely is a diamond in the rough. Also, it has cats.

BL is a genre with very, very low standards. I’d say that the only genre that’s worse off in that regard may be shows for kids, and even that is debatable. So, once in a blue moon a BL anime that isn’t utterly terrible is released, and just by the virtue of not being completely garbage it gets praised as the best thing ever. And to be fair, in comparison with most of other similar works, it’s pretty good. In comparison to regular anime though… that’s a different matter. First, the good part. The visuals are gorgeous. This movie is very nice to look at, andespecially the backgrounds are aesthetically pleasing. In this aspect, the production value is high, which is the opposite of average BL product. To give credit when it’s due, I have no complains about this part. Maybe the only downside being that this is the only interesting thing about the whole movie. It almost tempt me to give it a higher score, but unfortunately rest of it is still dragging the enjoyment down. The story is… chaotic. It feels like watching a digest of a series you have never seen. The characters are poorly introduced, it’s riddled with confusing cuts that seem to just skip over huge portions of would-be story, and has timeskips without warning that make it even more confusing. We are given no reason as to why should we care about the characters at all – unless of course you are a fujoshi, in which case the usual procedure would be to get hyped about boy’s love and disregard everything else, no further characterisation is required. Ultimately the story, or at least what I could catch from it, adds up to about an average shounen-ai plotline about dude liking a dude while some people are not fully okay with that. Nothing groundbreaking. I have not read the original work yet, so I don’t know if it too is as rushed as the movie, but guessing based on the fact that it is only one volume long, the adaptation probably didn’t left out much things. There is one part where the story finally stays at one place for a longer time and finally starts giving out a bit more coherent storytelling and even a somehow interesting source of conflict which again tempted me to at least give this a 6/10, alas it makes up only about fifth of the runtime and the movie still feels like a very long trailer than an actual movie. As hinted at the start, this is actually very good for its genre, but that is really saying more about the awful state of the genre than the quality of this movie. It is nice that it’s not so creepy and rapey as “classics" such as Sekaiichi Hatsukoi or Loveless. It’s nice it has animation that doesn’t look like a deviantart user was made to be in charge of the storyboard. But, that doesn’t make it great, that just means it passed the mark of not being terrible. Still, for fans of the genre I would recommend it. For others – well, as I mentioned, at least it looks

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