Then comes Natsu no Owari . The cicadas are dead. The festival lanterns are folded away. School feels larger and emptier. Here, the animation shifts to cooler tones — twilight blues, the gray of spent fireworks. The protagonist walks the same riverbank, but alone. A single geta sandal lies on its side. A half-melted popsicle stick in a convenience store trash bin. The end of summer isn’t a dramatic thunderclap; it’s the realization that you stopped counting the days somewhere in August, and now September is already here, indifferent.
Because for one season, we were the cicadas — loud, foolish, alive — and that was enough.
(a conceptual pairing, as if two short films or OVAs) would likely open with cicadas screaming under a bleached sky. In Natsu ga Owaru made , the protagonist clings to a transient love — a summer romance, a returning friend, a last childhood before moving away. Every watermelon slice, every shared umbrella in a sudden downpour, every unspoken word hangs with the knowledge: this ends . The animation would use overexposed sunlight, slow panning shots of melting ice cream, and a piano melody that hesitates on the seventh note. The feeling is not yet grief, but its premonition — a sweetness so sharp it aches.