The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes
夏へのトンネル, さよならの出口 (Natsu e no Tunnel, Sayonara no Deguchi)
- Drama
- Mystery
- Romance
- Supernatural
- Episodes
- 1
- Duration
- 1 hr 22 min
- Aired
- Sep 9, 2022
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Kaoru Touno’s home life has unraveled: after losing a sibling and watching his parents’ marriage end, peace feels out of reach. A fierce argument with his father sends him fleeing into the night, where he stumbles upon a strange tunnel that seems to draw him inside. Shaken by what he witnesses, he bolts for the exit—only to emerge holding a bird that looks exactly like the pet he once lost.
What feels like mere minutes in the tunnel turns out to be a full week in the outside world. Kaoru recalls whispers of the “Urashima Tunnel,” said to grant a person’s deepest wish at the cost of their lifespan, and the impossible return of his bird makes him wonder what else it could change. When he goes back, he finds he isn’t alone: Anzu Hanashiro, a newly transferred classmate who knows the same rumor, has followed him and proposes they test the tunnel together—because she, too, has something only it can give.
Otaku Consensus
The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes succeeds as a polished, melancholy YA romance: Tomohisa Taguchi’s direction, Studio CLAP’s luminous rural-coastal atmosphere, and the compact two-hander focus give its supernatural time concept real emotional weight. Its strongest stretch is the shift from eerie investigation to intimate grief drama, though the most repeated criticism is that the film’s lessons about loss can feel too straightforward, with a second half some viewers find predictable rather than revelatory. The result is a handsome, resonant feature whose ambiguity lingers more than its plot mechanics surprise.
Why You Should Watch
Watch this if you want the aching teenage-romance pull of Your Name without the blockbuster sprawl, or the quiet emotional pressure of a coming-of-age drama filtered through a single supernatural rule. It is built for viewers who like romance as atmosphere: pauses, glances, summer light, and the sense that every choice has a cost. Studio CLAP’s film is especially appealing if you prefer intimate casts over ensemble school comedy; Kaoru and Anzu carry the movie through guarded conversations rather than loud confession scenes. The mystery element is not a puzzle-box thriller, but a mood engine that turns grief, ambition, and time into something tactile. If obvious melodrama frustrates you, its directness may chafe; if you want polished melancholy in one sitting, it lands cleanly.
Key Characters
- AAnzu Hanashiro(VA: Marie Iitoyo)
Anzu is the film’s guarded, kuudere-leaning counterweight: sharp enough to treat the supernatural as a problem to measure, but emotionally closed in a way that makes every softening moment count.
- KKaoru Touno(VA: Ouji Suzuka)
Kaoru gives the film its bruised emotional center, with fans often responding to how his quietness reads less like passivity than a learned survival habit.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
Studio CLAP handles the film as a single completed feature rather than a TV-format story, which helps its romance-mystery structure stay concentrated on Kaoru and Anzu instead of expanding into a larger school ensemble.
- 2
The production’s visual identity is unusually well-documented in the staff credits: Yuuki Hatakeyama is credited as art director, Eiko Tsunadou for art design, Daiki Kuribayashi for art board, Saori Gouda for color design, and Takumi Hoshina for photography direction.
- 3
AniList’s tag profile identifies Time Manipulation at 100%, Rural at 90%, Coming of Age at 88%, and Coastal at 53%, placing the film closer to a summer-memory mood piece than a conventional supernatural action mystery.
- 4
Critical coverage repeatedly singled out the film’s romantic presentation, with The Guardian describing it as a “sumptuously romantic YA anime” and noting its proximity to the post-Your Name wave of metaphysical teen romances.
- 5
Its reception is strong but not runaway-populist: MAL lists it at 7.99 from 108,412 votes with a #764 rank and #1087 popularity, while AniList records a 79/100 score and 3,317 favourites.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- The film credits Mei Hachimoku for the original story and Kukka for the original character design, while Satomi Yabuki translated that design lineage into the movie’s character designs.
- Fun fact 2
- The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes premiered as a finished single-episode theatrical anime on September 9, 2022, rather than as a seasonal broadcast series.
- Fun fact 3
- Tomohisa Taguchi directed the film for Studio CLAP, a pairing that gave the project a distinct feature-film identity separate from the larger studios usually associated with high-profile teen supernatural romances.
- Fun fact 4
- The Guardian’s review explicitly connected the film’s premise to the cultural aftershock of Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name, framing it within a broader appetite for romantic anime built around impossible time and space distortions.
- Fun fact 5
- Fan-tag data gives the film a notable dual-protagonist profile: Male Protagonist appears at 86% and Female Protagonist at 68%, matching the movie’s emphasis on Kaoru and Anzu as a tightly balanced dramatic pair.
Studios
- CLAP
