I started watching 2009s Natsu No Arashi Summer Storm after seeing it listed as one of the more interesting anime of the last ten years. If spoilers for a 10 year old out of stock anime upset you then stop here and go read my review of Citizen Kane. NNA is interesting because its one of the few anime to directly address the homefront tribulations of Japan in WWII. The two female leads and two later characters were 16 yearold schoolgirls killed in a bombing raid on Yokohama on May 29th 1945. They return as ghosts but for some unexplained reason only in the summer. The main female lead is Arashiyama Sayoko whose family name translates as Storm Mountain and who is called Arashi for short. This plays nicely off the series name which could also be translated as Summers Arashi. Her goal in the aprevie is to go back to 1945 and rescue as many people as possible. But to travel in time she needs to form a connection with someone from the present. 220https://foundonweb.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/natsunoarashi10.png Early Shaft head tilt Enter Yasaka Hajime thirteen yearold typical shonen boy high energy high selfopinion exaggerated concern with being seen as manly. Did I mention he is short with square darkframed glasses? He develops an instant infatuation for Arashi and becomes her connection for their many trips to the past. 220https://foundonweb.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/natsunoarashi06.png Spoken like a true shonen The rest of the cast is equally paired up: Kaja Bergmann Kaya and Kamigamo Jun ghost of a German schoolgirl and her contemp connection. Jun is a crossdressing girl because of anime reasons. Fushimi Yayoi and Yamazaki Kanako another pair of ghosts from Arashis school. Fushimi can connect with Hajime and Yamazaki it turns out can connect with Murata. Finally theres Sayaka AKA Master the cafe owner and Murata Hideo a private investigator. The city they are on the outskirts of is Yokohama. Unlike other major cities in Japan it had not been heavily bombed early in the war and in the spring of 1945 it was protected by being on the short list of possible targets for the atomic bomb. When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen it was released to the general bombing list and was heavily bombed on the 29th of May. The first episode features some timetravel shenanigans involving a strawberry thats been stuffed with hot spice powder which serves to introduce all the characters. After that there are separate arcs in which Arashi/Hajime and Kaya/Jun go back to 1945 Kaya to see the man she was in love with and Arashi to try to save people. Another arc deals with Yayoi and Kanako and Kanakos attempt to keep Yayoi corporeal by draining Arashis life force. The 13th episode looks like something youd find as a DVD special its a reprise of the first episode but with a cherry instead of a strawberry and everyone is in goofy costumes. There are two aspects of NNA that are interesting beyond the actual story. First is the look at wartime Japan. The anime shows the raids and the B29s and the falling bombs. Houses burn and people die. 220https://foundonweb.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/natsunoarashi14.png Not something you normally see in a shonen program. In the Yayoi/Kanako arc you see high school girls drafted to work in an aircraft factory one of the thousands of small scale installations that the Japanese used instead of following the German and American pattern of large production plants. This by the way was one of the justifications of the widespread firebombing campaign because there were few concentrated high value targets. The girls work full time and are from all over. Yayoi is from a rich family I think thats her family mansion they end up haunting while Kanako is a workhardened girl from a poor family. In one sequence Yayoi plays a concert for the girls during the weekly power blackout when the factory cant operate. 220https://foundonweb.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/natsunoarashi15.png Second NNA has some interesting ideas about the effects of time travel. Two of Hajimes strawberries disappear one because his grandfather ate it and the other because he came back in time and stole it from himself. Kaya was mad at Arashi because she never read the note she left in her diary at the school that she was waiting at The Ark cafe one of the few places to survive the war unbombed. They go back in time and bring the diary forward to the present which means it wasnt there when Arashi stopped to look for it. More significantly Arashi goes back to 1945 and shelters a crying child during the air raid telling him to be a hero. Later in a trip to 1985 they meet a brash young child who informs them that his father keeps telling him that its important to be a hero. His father was the child that Arashi saved. Back in the present it turns out that the private investigator is that child all grown up and still brash he carries a sword practice or real depending on the job and drives a soupedup Vespa another example of the goofy humor embedded in the anime. On the tragic side when Kaya/Jun go back they project from the current day cafe to the cafe in 1945. Their arrival wakes up the owner who Kaya is in love with and he proceeds to go home where hes killed in the bombing. If he had stayed in the cafe hed have survived. So thats the first season. Its different enough that it should be on everyones watchlist. Crunchyroll has both seasons but one never knows for how long.