Summer Pockets: Summer routes were good, I wanted more of it

So I finished the expanded Summer Pockets and I’m kind of conflicted on it. On one hand, it’s a rare instance where I get a vn that makes me feel something akin to what other readers supposedly feel about the high school setting. It’s been awhile and throughout a good portion of the vn, my only feeling was basically “oh shit summer vacation ruled”. Where you can just walk to a park and befriend random ass kids and play soccer. Where you find new friends when going to the library. And it’s been rarer these days but there has been times where I remember them and wonder how they’re doing.
On the other hand, there’s a lot more going on and that eventually becomes the main focal point and I’d rather just stay and enjoy my summer nostalgia. And that’s kind of ironic and on point if you finish it all. But to be fair, what I’m iffy about was part of the original vn.
So there’s going to be some spoilers, I’ll note it when it happens.

So the route order isn’t really important. In the original, you’re supposed to have Ao as the 4th route and the rest could be whatever. But now since there’s 8 routes before the coupled true route, the order could be in a couple of places. The only thing is mainly Umi gets locked out after the 4th route until you finish the rest. And I think hers should be done before it gets locked. The other ones is that doing Shizuku before Tsumugi makes one scene less impactful and that Miki should probably be done after Ao. And I guess Shiki should be done at the end though I had her as the 7th route.

There isn’t much of a common route, it’s just pieces sectioned off but that’s pretty much what summer was. Unless you had to practice for a team or something, you can just do whatever. Sometimes he wanted to play pingpong, sometimes he wanted to go fishing and other times he just walked into some weird coincidence on the street.
My favorite route was Kamome with Shiki being right up her ass. Honestly Shiki is done better but it’s just not the same feeling that I get from Kamome. Miki and Shizuki’s routes were kind of average to me but they both ended strongly. Like Miki’s route started running at 3/4’s mark. Though I guess Tsumugi was kind of the same way, lol. Except that hers had a more relatable summer feel to it than Miki did. Outside of that, I had the most fun when it wasn’t concentrating on a specific character. A good example of that is that I don’t really like Shirone. She’s fine but her drama was kind of middling, and she’s part of the reason why the plot becomes convoluted. But a good chunk of her route was just having Hairi making her hangout with him and the other people from the island. He’s having fun; she’s having fun; we’re all having fun. And I really liked that, a lot of routes in vns just have every character disappear outside of the character you chose. But they’re still around in Shirone’s route and I generally have a more enjoyable time.

I felt the true route to be kind of a stagnating experience. It just lingers on for too long and it doesn’t hit the right amount of payback. Basically I didn’t get a cathartic experience from it. You can understand what’s going on but it’s still convoluted and I’d rather go back and read Kamome’s route again. And again, that’s pretty ironic. It’s to the point that Kamome just feels like the odd one out of the original 4; where she could’ve been in a different vn just about enjoying summer. Mainly that I came in knowing nothing, I got the summer fever and having a good time and then got kicked off and told it’s not really about that. Basically, it was cool but I want my summer fever back.

So you might’ve noticed that I didn’t really talk about the characters themselves, and that’s because they’re relatively close to one-note for a huge chunk of their stay. Tenzen loves pingpong, sure he’s a good person, athletic and has a thing for another character but 90% of the time, it’s pingpong. Pretty much the same with Ryouichi; he wants to be topless but Miki keeps shooting him when he does. Sure he’s a cool dude that wants to help out whenever it’s possible alongside basically being a fisherman, but 70% of his stuff is trying to be topless. You’d probably never see Miki around much if it wasn’t to shoot Ryouichi, otherwise she’s a rule stickler. And you can pinpoint a main quirk on most of these characters that will handle most of what they do. Like I got pretty tired of hearing Shizuku trying to insert boobs into the conversation. And the routes generally explain the reasoning behind their quirks, but it’s not like they explode with a lot more personality. You just understand where they’re coming from. And while I’ve just been shitting on them, a lot of this works overall. Since again, a good chunk of the vn is a lot of these characters hanging out with each other. The mc is still new, they banter around and it’s funny. It just works, it’s like befriending somebody in the park and you guys just play soccer. And your interaction with them is mainly about soccer, so we’re basically onenote characters to each other but it’s fine because we still had fun.

There’s also a couple of minigames. There’s a MesuKing type that I didn’t invest much time into. I beat it, but I basically save scummed the tutorial fight so I started in the top 10 instead of being in dead last, and I think that was in the 30s. Then there was pingpong, where I spent a lot of time in. To my surprise I found there was a pingpong tournament and I had a blast in that. Except that most of the opponents had massive bullshit mechanics helping them. Especially Shizuku where she blocks 2 or 3 points when she maxes out her meter. Miki’s finishing move was also bullshit where you have like 1/2 a second to figure out where to hit. Then there was Umi where she summons her monsters and one does direct damage to you and it’s the most bullshit of them all. The only one that can compete with Umi is Tsumugi where she isekais both you and your teammate and you lose like 4 balls and almost lose the game.
I think I missed a mechanic in there because even if I’m hitting all perfects, I still lose more meter than them most of them. Basically when you run out, you drop your paddle and then you have to wait 2 or 3 turns to get it back. You can hit the ball back with your hand but you’re most likely just going to lose more hp that way. The only real reason to do it is they’re already in critical state. If you can consistently counter smash, then you’ll lose a lot less hp than just taking the shot. So what you get from beating this whole thing is pretty wholesome, you get a small Tenzen route and it’s pretty funny on how it goes through. Sadly I don’t think there is any kind of side route for Ryouichi.

So in all, I’m giving this an 8. I’m not super fond of the true route, it feels like it’s retreading a few things that I’ll cover in the spoilers. If you’re someone that habitually drops but wants to experience summer, then go for Shirone, Kamome and Shiki. And maybe Umi and Tsumugi but those might be more hit or miss. I forgot to mention that my favorite character was Tenzen. Sure in reality he’d be fucking annoying when he’d constantly use pingpong as a reference but he can still keep up a conversation. He’s really endearing if you get past it because he’s still trying to help Hairi when he asks for it. He’s basically a combo of Noda and Godan. Also Summer Pockets’ soundtrack has no way of beating Angel Beats’ soundtrack in terms of variety but it holds its own and Hourglass of Summer is probably a track I’ll remember for awhile.

Spoilers:

So the main note before going through this is that this is just my conjecture. And that’s kind of obvious but who knows when someone takes it as fact and gets mad.

So a lot happens, and also a lot seems kind of pointless at times. Because there’s two central themes in the vn, and they’re kind of fighting each other for the top spot. One is relearning how to enjoy your time, specifically summer vacation; Take it as a break, get refreshed and go on with your life once more. And the other is about the butterflies and the magic shit that’s happening on the island. What are they, how did they become to be and what’s their purpose. How does it all coincide with the snippets of scenes that are happening between some of these routes. Some routes handle the first theme, the others the 2nd. And for the people that really like the second will love the true route. The others that enjoyed the more simple approach of the first theme might be disappointed because in the end the other theme gets the spotlight even though they’re somewhat forcefully conjoined.

Because the first theme kind of changes from having a break and going back for a round two; to a scenario of “but this is the best and I never want to get back out there”. Shizuku’s route actually handles this really well even though I wasn’t too keen with her route overall. The characters knew if they kept on going on the path they’ve set, it’d hit the degraded scenario so they do a quit cut to go around it.

Like Hairi goes to the island as a way to run away from his problems. Mainly that he had an episode and fucked up in a swimming meet and his life spiraled out of control. He’s now afraid of swimming and some kind of inconsistent level of fear of larger bodies of water. And you’d think that’s something to consider in the grand scale of the vn, but not really. It’s important for the contained routes and a red herring along the way but otherwise you can ignore it. I’ll get back to this by the end.

So the true route is convoluted. Shirone gets visions of what will happen to the future to specific people, and they’re pretty much always bad news. Part of it is in her route. Basically she thinks as long as she doesn’t interact with anybody, then visions won’t show up and so nothing will happen to the others. But really it’s their future selves shooting this knowledge back into the past. I think there’s something that makes it so the opposite works too but I think that’s based on becoming a butterfly and just existing until that point in time in the future. Anyways, this is pretty important overall because the whole family is spamming the shit out of it.
So the short of it all, with a lot of skipping; Shirone only has her grandpa. Her dad died and her mom just disappeared. Shirone figures out her power to find them, and that fucks her over since now some future events are set in stone. Really what the mom was doing was trying to make Shirone not activate the power. And that’s probably because she goes further up in time and knows that Shirone dies during Umi’s birth. And that’s what fucks her up and she becomes a butterfly. So before that she contacts Kyouko and her mom to handle a shed of random shit belonging to a lot of people to be used as an anchor point for things to come. This is somewhat important but I’ll get back to it. So it’s some large ass loop where Shirone is dead because of giving birth to Umi. Hairi is a shitty parent but at least he’s kind of around and kind of pays for shit. So it’s Tomoya but not as bad. So Hairi goes back to the island for Shirone’s 10 year thing and leaves Umi behind. He does this for the same reason as Kobato, basically getting too close to knowing Shirone can proc the same power and fuck up her life. Well sucks to be him because she does that anyway and now she’s looping the same summer so she can get to know Shirone. She’s not really into Hairi at first, since dad version is kind of garbo. But she warms to him pretty quickly. Or at least from what she said, like it came to the point that Umi’s route probably happened before you start reading. And that’s why he’s already having deja vi in the prologue. And it might mean that the Takahara family have their own power since he does a lot of crazy shit throughout the routes that should’ve killed him. So Hairi is technically more op than the rest of the group. And I think his lineage is the only reason Umi didn’t nuke herself in one turn. I think it ties in with Wenders, where she’s supporting one of the island pocket domain and Kyouko handles a semi one. Or at least that’s what I thought but I’ll talk about that later.

Anyways, the gist is that Umi keeps looping back, and if Hairi hits Shirone’s route; Then Shirone loops back to have the chance to see Umi again. And if it doesn’t work out, then Shirone’s mom loops as well. Basically looping until what’s set in stone actually changes. And it’s not really set in stone, it’s just Shirone doesn’t care. She could’ve married someone else and the future would change but she wanted Umi. So after Umi gets the summer and everything she wanted, she goes even further back to stop Shirone from ever getting her power. And that part was kind of weird since you assume the new character is Umi but in the beginning of the route, she says she borrowed her power so it made it seem like maybe it was Hairi. And she’s also scared of getting on the boat and that she’s afraid of the water so it makes it seem like it’s Hairi. From what I recall, Umi doesn’t have that phobia. But really it was a red herring where the borrowed power was just an amalgamation of butterflies. So she might be a mix of a lot of people with just Umi being the top personality. Shirone doesn’t get her powers, so the future is no longer set and somehow that helps almost everybody in the main cast. Kamome is fine, Ai is fine, Tsumugi is fine. It’s just one of those things where they just wrapped everything for the sake of doing it and I don’t really like it, it feels like it’s lacking conviction that a lot of their titles have. So Hairi shows up in the last iteration again but also without any baggage and finally gets allowed to clean the shed. He’s offered to keep one thing from the shed since Kyouko’s chucking the stuff out. And he picks the rainbow colored paper plane, and that was basically Umi. So she’s back with the help of Shiki. And that’s the part where I stopped understanding Wenders’s point in the plot, I’d assume it’d be Wenders that would handle anything to do with that area.

In my mind, things were going to be handled somewhat differently. Shirone’s mom sees that Shirone will die, so she talks with Kyouko and because she was overusing it, she turns into a butterfly and goes back in time and gives her memories back to herself so she can scan the future again. Back in the further past, Wenders and Hairi’s grandma are friends. I thought while Wenders ran away into the pocket, the grandma basically anchored it. So Wenders could come back whenever she wanted to. Fastforward to younger Kyouko. Shirone’s mom talks about what she’s thinking about, Kyouko asks her mom about setting up the anchor. She laughs because she already has one but goes and asks Wenders to keep it up for a little bit. Keep in mind that time isn’t linear in there for some reason. Now back to the present with all the looping shit, have it be the last loop. Umi saves the day, OG Wenders shows Umi the way. Grandma’s favor is complete, Wenders leaves and it’s back to her time. Bangs the guy that I forgot what his name even was. Tsumugi is now a real kid.
So I guess in Reflection Blue, everything is basically the same. The difference is Shiki’s route is already done at this point. Shiki takes over Wenders job, and guides Umi instead. Maybe gets reunited with Hairi after he dies.

I redid Shiki’s route if anything changes, but nope. I also did Ao’s route to see if anything changed in hers. And that’s because he’s touched by a butterfly that gives out some memories where a dad is suicidal due to both his wife and kid dying. And considering this is key and subtlety is hit or miss for them, I assumed that was going to be the true route. I guess it was more subtle than Little Busters at least. And I guess it was if you consider those memories were after Umi goes back in time. But there wasn’t new in the route to reflect what the reader now knows.

Other notes I had was that Tsumugi’s route was pretty whatever until the last 10% of it where it makes the rest of the route pretty good. Shizuku’s route isn’t on the summer side routes, so basically this could’ve been put in a different vn. The ending was still impactful but only if you did Tsumugi’s route first. And that point, my favorite part was basically being hard carried by a different character. Umi is a mixed bag, it takes a little for it to start but most of it is comical. I think a lot of her enjoyment is based on where you are in life. If you’re rather young or you simply dislike children and also ignore your siblings children, you might not like it. Otherwise it’s really cute and it becomes a good time. Though there is a good chunk where it felt like it was padding for time but overall it was a good route that can be used to bridge the gap between the normal routes and the beginning of the true route. To be honest I think I’d rather have the reader be forced to read her route before the first change instead of just being able to completely miss it. Miki’s ending was fucking great, but only if you’re really into family and bonds.

A lot of Summer Pockets felt like they were trying their own thing but also trying to redo a few routes from previous titles. You get a huge amount of Air vibes in the beginning and also some Clannad vibes sprinkled in.
All in all, I had a lot of fun with this vn. Part of me wishes I stopped early on because I got what I wanted instead of them trying to be Key once again. Sometimes something simple is all I really need. The concept behind all of it is still pretty neat albeit kind of convoluted compared to some of the other titles. I’m giving it an 8 but honestly sometimes it feels like a 7. If it was specifically just the common route, the hijinks and one of the routes I really liked such as Kamome, I think I’d give it a 9.