Kimagure Orange Road

Plot

Kyōsuke Kasuga and his family had to move several times after being seen using their esper powers. Upon settling for the seventh time, Kyōsuke briefly meets a pretty girl who gives him her straw hat, and he falls in love with her on sight. On the first day of school he learns this girl is his junior high classmate Madoka Ayukawa, who, contrary to his initial impression, is feared as a tough and no-nonsense delinquent. Their underclassman (and Madoka's best friend), Hikaru Hiyama, sees Kyōsuke use his powers to sink an impressive basketball shot and falls in love with him. Kyōsuke ends up dating Hikaru while constantly struggling with his feelings for Madoka due to his indecisiveness. Likewise, Madoka has feelings for Kyōsuke which she masks with her capricious nature for fear of hurting her friend Hikaru.

Characters

Kyōsuke Kasuga (春日 恭介, Kasuga Kyōsuke; voice: Tōru Furuya (Japanese), Yuu Mizushima (1985 Shonen Jump Special) )

Kyōsuke is the male protagonist in the love triangle. He and his siblings have supernatural powers and are described as espers in the series. They are forbidden from using their powers in public, lest they be discovered and exploited. Kyōsuke's esper powers include teleportation, telekinesis, and "time-slipping" (a kind of time travel) while falling from heights such as stairs. He can alter mechanical devices such as elevators and traffic lights. He can direct his powers to his ears to amplify his hearing, and he has also demonstrated hypnotism power, as evidenced when he hypnotized himself to be more decisive. Kyōsuke is also rarely shown to use his powers to temporarily amplify his speed and strength. On very rare occasions—generally, when Madoka is directly threatened—his power has taken the form of raw energy that can shatter concrete walls or short out every light in a disco. Kyōsuke is a pretty gentle person and a bit of a goody-goody—when he sees Madoka smoking, he scolds her in a very nerdy way (and then uses his powers to destroy her cigarette). It is his indecisiveness that leads to the love triangle with Hikaru and Madoka. He is unable to decide between his feelings for Hikaru and Madoka. Due to the loose manner that he and his sisters relate to each other, it is a running gag that many characters consider him a playboy and two-timing since it is believed he is dating Hikaru.

Madoka Ayukawa (鮎川 まどか, Ayukawa Madoka; voice: Hiromi Tsuru (Japanese), Saeko Shimazu (1985 Shonen Jump Special) )

The lead female character of the series. Despite appearing standoffish at first glance, she harbors a kind, altruistic personality underneath her tough exterior. Madoka has been friends with Hikaru and Yūsaku since childhood, and more recently has become friends with Kyōsuke. Though she has the reputation of a delinquent at school, where classmates refer to her as "Madoka the Pick", she is dedicated to academics, enjoys studying, and is also a very competent saxophone player. When she is not in class, she works part-time at the ABCB cafe. In truth, her capricious behavior as a young delinquent is just a masking of her sadness and loneliness, due to the fact that she is a misunderstood loner. She starts to be seen in another light thanks to Kyōsuke, and also reveals her real kind and selfless personality to most of the other characters. Madoka always tends to put others above her, and really dislikes being a burden to them. However, when Madoka and Kyōsuke both confess their true feelings for each other, she tells Kyōsuke that he has to break it off with Hikaru, who must understand the truth of the situation.

Production

Kimagure Orange Road was commissioned by Weekly Shōnen Jump after rejecting Matsumoto's work "Spring Wonder". Several short manga that were precursors to Kimagure Orange Road were created prior and later published in a collection called Graffiti. Matsumoto later stated that Kimagure Orange Road was the first series to combine elements of science fiction and romantic comedy together.

Matsumoto and his three or four assistants worked in a one-room apartment, with Matsumoto saying he sometimes had to work in the bathroom due to a lack of space. One of his assistants was Kazushi Hagiwara. Because an art shift is seen in Kimagure Orange Road once it resumed from a Matsumoto health-related hiatus, it is rumored that Hagiwara was responsible for the change in style.

Protagonist Kyōsuke Kasuga seems to have been based on Matsumoto himself, the author saying "His nature was always my own." The series' setting was inspired by the Umegaoka, Gotokuji and Shimokitazawa neighborhoods in the Setagaya Ward of Tokyo. The café ABCB seen in the manga was inspired by a real one called Genso Katsudo Shashin Kan.

Media

Manga

Kimagure Orange Road was written and illustrated by Izumi Matsumoto and serialized in the shōnen manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Jump from issue No. 15 on March 26, 1984, to No. 42 on September 28, 1987. The 156 individual chapters were collected in 18 tankōbon volumes by Shueisha from September 10, 1985, through August 4, 1995. The series was republished in a 10 volume aizōban edition and a 10 volume bunkoban edition. A special chapter, "Panic in the Bathhouse!", was created for Matsumoto's Comic On CD-ROM manga series and published in Super Jump issue No. 10 of 1996. A second special was published in Weekly Playboy issue No. 44 of 1999.

In March 2013, Hivelinx released the manga first volume in English as an e-book for NTT Solmare's Facebook app "ComicFriends", and for Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks. In March 2014, Digital Manga Guild acquired its rights and released Kimagure Orange Road through its eManga website. The series was expanded to 20 volumes for the English digital release. The manga was crowdfunded for a six volume omnibus print edition with a new translation, and reached its goal as of May 5, 2016. All six print omnibus volumes were made available for purchase exclusively on eManga's website and Amazon on May 13, 2019.

Anime

Kimagure Orange Road was adapted into an anime series broadcast on Nippon Television, animated by Studio Pierrot and directed by veteran animator Osamu Kobayashi with character designs by Akemi Takada and scripts by Kenji Terada, with Narumi Kakinouchi adding design work to the anime, as well as the opening and ending credits for episodes 1–8.

AnimEigo licensed the first movie and the OVA series for North America on VHS and Laserdisc in 1993/1994. A subtitled Laserdisc and VHS release of the TV series was published in 1998.

On February 1, 2002, a complete box set was released on DVD with updated and "improved" translations from the earlier VHS and LD releases. However, the company's decision to remove the opening and ending songs from each episode on the DVD release was heavily criticized by fans, forcing AnimEigo to release a public apology and a promise that they would correct their mistake once their initial press of the "flawed" DVDs were depleted. After a lengthy remastering process, the company made good on their promise and gave buyers the option of mailing in their original DVDs to receive a version that had the themes intact, free of charge. AnimEigo's translations were not legally available outside of North America, and their license for the TV series and OVAs expired 10 years after the initial licensing, in July and August 2006 respectively.

On September 1, 2017, Netflix in Japan began streaming the entire 48 episodes of Kimagure Orange Road with a new high definition transfer and restoration.

In August 2018, Discotek Media announced that it would release two Blu-ray Disc sets, one covering the television series and one covering the OVAs and the first movie. Features on the set include the original TV series remastered in high definition using the new transfer from Netflix Japan, creditless openings and endings, TV broadcast promos, translation notes, an art gallery, as well as the music video OVA "Their Love Repository." The TV series Blu-ray set was released on March 26, 2019.

AD Vision released the second movie to dubbed and subtitled VHS in 1998 and on DVD on August 21, 2001. However, this movie went out of print in 2009 after ADV's shutdown, since its license was not transferred to Section23 Films. This movie remains the only piece of the animated series that has been dubbed into English.

Soundtrack

Composed for the most part by Shirō Sagisu.

Anime television series

OVA: "White Lovers" (1), "Hawaiian Suspense" (2), "I was a Cat, I was a Fish" (3), "Hurricane Akane" (4), "Stage of Love = Heart on Fire (Spring is for Idol)" (5), "Stage of Love = Heart on Fire (Birth of a Star!)" (6), "Unexpected Situation" (7), "Message in Rouge" (8)

Kimagure Orange Road Movie~ I Want to Return to That Day

New Kimagure Orange Road Movie ~ And, The Beginning of that Summer

Reception

Kimagure Orange Road was an instant success. The manga sold over 20 million tankōbon volumes in Japan.

Critical response

Reviewing Digital Manga Guild's first English release for Otaku USA, Che Gilson described Kimagure Orange Road as an enjoyable and classic manga. He wrote that "Even though it looks its age, the artwork is clean and easy to read, the characters are engaging and well drawn, and the simplicity has a charm all its own." However, he stated that the translation suffers from a lack of editorial oversight, with missing and misplaced words, sentences not fitting into their word bubbles, and awkward phrases.

Also of Otaku USA but looking back on the anime, Erin Finnegan wrote that the psychic powers are not important in the series, serving simply as an excuse for "zany plotlines" and gags, with the I Want to Return to That Day movie dropping them completely. She noted that the TV series does not have a resolution at the end and that viewers wanting closure have to watch I Want to Return to That Day, which she called "very touching, and very true to life." Anime News Network gave positive reviews for both the TV series and the I Want to Return to That Day movie. THEM Anime Reviews gave the TV series a rating of 5 out of 5.

The 1996 film New Kimagure Orange Road: Summer's Beginning received largely negative reception. Critics and fans described the film as a convoluted mess that lacked the emotional depth of the first movie, with many feeling it was an unnecessary addition to a story that had already reached a satisfying conclusion.

Cultural impact

Kimagure Orange Road is considered an influential series. The anime has been credited alongside Dragon Ball for introducing entire generations of Europeans to anime and manga.

According to manga critic Jason Thompson, Kimagure Orange Road is "The archetypal shonen rom-com" and had a major influence on the shonen romantic comedy genre. Although not the first to be made, it was the first to have significant popularity. He wrote that the series is about "first love and indecision, about the blurred lines between love and friendship, and it's all very close to reality, or better still a sweet, idealized, gentle reality." Thompson noted that the art is not great, but it gets better as the series continues. He also called Madoka the root of the tsundere archetype. The series influenced numerous later romantic comedies, including Video Girl Ai in the 1990s, Golden Time in the 2010s, and Seiren.

Manga UK notes that the Christmas episode ("Kyosuke Timetrips! The Third Christmas") featured an early use of the time loop plot device, predating the films Groundhog Day (1993) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and the "Endless Eight" arc of the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels (2004) and anime series (2009). In turn, Kimagure Orange Road's use of the time loop concept was predated by the anime film Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984).