The background story is that Kasuga Kyosuke, a teenager in high school, falls for a beautiful young classmate, Ayukawa Madoka. He knows little about her except that it's love at first sight but she's much more reserved about openly displaying her feelings for him. At the same time, her best friend, Hiyama Hikaru, falls for Kyosuke and chases him all over the place, making the so-called love triangle aspect of the show more interesting. So far, the series sounds like just one of number of others and pretty generic, right? Well, the twist this time is that Kyosuke is gifted with psychic abilities that run in his family. In the series, he was warned that if he publically usues his powers, the family will have to move away and never come back, making his love for Madoka all the more dangerous. The writing of the series was such that you'd routinely watch the cast try to get out of some situation, often in a very comedic manner, with the love interest played up more than usual (but not so sappy as to make me hate it). Well, after a great many episodes and some movies, the final chapter in the saga, New Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning, that really seemed more like an excuse to get a handful of the original cast members back for one last reminiscence than anything else.

Okay, if you haven't seen the series, that bit above should give you enough information to appreciate this movie but it also leaves out a tremendous amount of detail. New Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning, which I'll refer to as KOR for the rest of the review, is initially set in 1991 where a young Kyosuke gets a mysterious phone call from himself, warning him about "the car". He pays it no mind, is struck by a car and the next thing you know, he wakes up three years later, trying to figure out what happened. His future self is MIA and his two gal pals have moved on with their lives, further complicating the situation. As the story progresses, we get some of the quirks of time travel and how actions we take can mess up the intended timeline but the story here stuck primarily with his social interests, barely touching on his abilities or larger consequences of the accident.

So, if you haven't seen the series in all its full glory, you're going to be a bit at a loss here yet I'll take this opportunity to suggest picking it up as it had a lot going for it; even if you're not a fan of romance anime series. This movie did have some stand alone value but not enough to elevate it to a rating above Rent It if you haven't watched at least some of the original series that the characters come from. There were no true extras this time and the glossing over of so much material hampered my enjoyment, even if only a little bit. In all though, the series and movies were well written and several steps above the usual romance anime I've been a party to watching over the years.

Picture: New Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning was presented in the same 1.33:1 ratio full frame color it was created in so many years ago. While it didn't look contemporary, it looked good for its age with vibrant colors, little grain, and few compression artifacts or video noise. I did see some pattern noise but it was rare enough that I had to look so I'm not going to suggest it was poorly mastered.

Sound: The audio was presented with the usual choice of either the original 2.0 Dolby Digital Japanese stereo or a 2.0 Dolby Digital stereo English dub. I thought the original track vocals flowed better and the subtitles varied more than usual this time, often giving different meanings to things but the dub had some decent moments too (especially the music portion which sounded enhanced compared to the original). If you like the original language track, this will appeal to you just as dub fans will find enough to like and support their decision to enjoy shows as modified for the English language.

Extras: The only extra this time was some trailers.

Final Thoughts: New Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning will certainly merit a must have rating for fans of the series and OVA releases but this review isn't written for them so much as the casual anime fan that might've missed the series or found it too darned expensive to purchase. Whatever else may be said about the relative merits of anime, this movie was a pleasant look at some well liked characters in a different situation; as much an homage to them as a stand alone movie. ADV Films did a good job when they first released this movie and you could do far worse than check it out with a significant other.

If you enjoy anime, take a look at some of the recommendations by DVDTalk's twisted cast of reviewers in their Best Of Anime 2003 and Best Of Anime 2004 article or regular column Anime Talk