Summer Days with Coo - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Summer Days with Coo



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
I will fully admit that I was a bit side lined by Summer Days With Coo when I viewed it for the first time. I was expecting a light and fluffy summer adventure anime flick, but what we got was something much more grim and somber in nature. We’re privy to a cute little green monster and a boy’s relationship with it ala E.T., but that’s where the similarities stop really. The film itself is based off of an adaptation of novels by Masao Kogure which were wildly popular over in Japan, and delves deep into themes of human cruelty over the course of a single summer season for the pair. Sure, there’s plenty of cute and fluffy stuff to appeal to most people, but director Keiichi Hara certainly doesn’t shy away from the violence and somber nature of some of the film’s more adult portions of the tale in any way.

The film starts out with a slightly shocking (for it’s genre) kind of violence where Coo and his father are met by Samurai in ancient Japanese history. Coo and his kind are basically water creatures, and Coo’s father is here to warn the humans to stay away from draining the rice paddies, which act as their home. The samurai ends up getting the old water creature, leaving Coo running for cover. Years and years later in modern times, a young boy named Koichi finds a fossil of Coo, and ends up re hydrating and reanimating the water creatures. Fascinated by the creature, Koichi takes him home and introduces him to his family, who surprisingly aren’t nearly as freaked out about it as the Samurai were.

Coo has major issues with people after what happened to him years ago, and is in a form of PTSD shock. He wants to find his kind once more and see if there are any more water creatures left, so both he and Koichi head off to see if they can find any. Of course they run into adventures along the way and the rest of the world most certainly DOES find out about Coo at some point, going so far as to drag the poor creature up in front of a TV camera so all the world can see him on a talk show (being that Coo does speak the human tongue), and the rest of humanity’s interactions with the beast can be shockingly cruel and blunt.

In many ways Summer Days With Coo is a bittersweet drama that delves into the fear and misunderstanding that humans can project onto others, just this time in “monster” form. Fear of things we don’t understand, as well as our natural propensity to run over everything nature is on full display, but we also have a story of healing and bonding that happens between Koichi and Coo. Especially since Koichi is having to deal with his own internal anger that is eating him up. As good as all that is, there are some slight downsides to the story as well. There’s a completely tone deaf scene near the end of the movie where Coo and Koichi’s family are having what could very well be their last meal together. A scene that could have been sweet and heart rending in many ways, but has Coo going off about how humans are losing their souls because they can’t respect land and water. It’s harshly tone deaf to the rest of the movie and had me scratching my head just a bit. The same happens when an uninvited quest comes to the house (I won’t spoil it for you here, but it was a bit shocking and mind numbing).




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

The 1.78:1 framed AVC encode is perfectly acceptable for an animated film, showcasing bright blues and green colors with splashes of other more earthy tones spread throughout. Delineation is perfectly fine, and overall detail levels are excellent. I did notice some intermittent banding a few brief issues of digital artifact in the background, but otherwise this is an excellent looking Blu-ray. Colors are warm, details are a plenty, and artifacting is really minimal overall.

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Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix in Japanese is very impressive sounding, giving weight to some of the more mystical elements of the movie, as well as creating a good surround sound mix with the ambient water effects and the rumbling of people yelling. Surrounds are always active with the whispering sounds of nature, as well as some of the more boisterous moments of the film. Dialog is crisp and clean, and the LFE channel gets a hefty workout that I wasn’t expecting. It’s an all around great sounding mix and easily the highlight of the package.









Extras:

• Premiere Q&A With Cast Members
• Deleted Scenes
• Trailers
• TV Spots

Final Score: ​

Summer Days With Coo was an anime film that has been around since what, 2007?, and somehow I hadn’t gotten around to watching it before (which is amazing considering the anime consumption in my house). I certainly enjoyed it, but it was a distinct system shock when I ended up watching it. The film is a heavy heavy drama at heart, and a good one at that. It has it’s fair share of stumbles along the way though, keeping it from being a truly GREAT look into PTSD and the effects of human cruelty. Shout Factory’s Blu-ray release is very solid though, with good video and audio, but the normal lack of substantial extras for Anime releases. Worth checking out.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Kazato Tomizawa, Takahiro Yokokawa, Naoki Tanaka, Naomi Nishida, Tamaka Matsumoto, Ken'ichi Nagira
Directed by: Keiichi Hara
Written by: Keiichi Hara (screenplay), Masao Kogure (Novel)
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: Japanese: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English
Studio: Shout Factory
Rated: NR
Runtime: 138 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: January 21st, 2020

Recommendation: Check it Out

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I also missed this when it came out in 2007.. I will have to check it out..