YAMA NO SUSUME: NEXT SUMMIT

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA AdventureYama no Susume
TV SHORT AdventureYama no Susume: Third Season

REVIEWS

• 

  TheAnimeBingeWatcher

  65/100
  I wanted to love this season, but the Yama no Susume magic just isn't as strong this time around.

  There’s an argument to be made that Yama no Susume is the most underrated anime of all time. Maybe not outright number one, but it’s certainly up there. The fact that it started as a series of three-minute shorts and never climbed above twelve minutes per episode, coupled with the lack of legal streaming options, means so few people have gotten a chance to check out- or even know about- one of the best goddamn cute girls shows on the market. Not only does it do a great job you on mountain climbing as a hobby, in all its intricacies and charms, it uses that extensive hobby knowledge to weave a genuinely wonderful story about personal growth and struggle through the specifics of undergoing such a strenuous, difficult activity. Watching Aoi Yukimura grow out of her shell as she dives deeper and deeper into mountain climbing is, no bullshit, some of the most believable, natural, and human coming-of-age drama I’ve seen in this medium, never mind her absolutely adorable back-and-forth with longtime friend (and future wife) Hinata Kuraue. Like K-On before it and Yuru Camp after it, Yama no Susume is a standard bearer for just how good CGDCT shows can be at communicating the whimsy and magic of ordinary life.

  And now, after so many years, we finally have a season 4! And not just any season 4; this time, we’re getting full-length 24-minute episodes! And a simulcast on a readily available streaming service! With the same director and so many of the same staff members returning! At long last, Yama no Susume has been plucked from obscurity! Finally, the whole world will get a chance to experience one of anime’s most underappreciated masterpieces!

  So why am I left feeling so unsatisfied?

  Look, this review really hurts to write. I’m a Yama no Susume stan through and through, I will take every opportunity I can to sing this show’s praises. I wanted nothing more than to come out of season 4 gushing about how wonderful it was to see this show continue its winning streak. But I have to be honest with me feelings, and my feelings are that Yama no Susume: Next Summit was a letdown. Not a bad show by any means, but an inferior sequel that fails to capture so much of the spark that made those first 3 seasons so special. Just to make sure I wasn’t nostalgia-blinded, I went back and watched a random episode from season 2 to revisit the old show with fresh eyes, and let me tell you, the difference was night and day. There was something magical about this show, something that has not fully carried through into its most recent installment. And while there’s still a pretty good cute girls anime left once you trip that special something away, it’s not until the final episode that it reaches the same heights that past seasons reached on a regular basis.

  So what changed? What was that special something that no longer exists, or at least doesn’t exist nearly as much? The obvious Big Problem to point at is the fact that this season wastes its first four episodes recapping the past three seasons, so we only really have eight episodes of new material. And yes, that’s definitely a huge, completely unnecessary issue that threatens to derail everything before it even gets going. Especially since studio 8it wastes so much time and resources re-animating all your favorite moments from YamaSusu’s past that the production is very noticeably stretched thin throughout the remainder of the actual new stuff. It reminds me a lot of RWBY Ice Queendom, where it wastes its best animation just recapping past glories to get newcomers up to speed and then struggles to keep up the momentum for the story it supposedly exists to tell in the first place. And much like in Ice Queendom, the recapped events are so condensed, with so much of their critical connective tissue removed, that it fails to do justice to just how damn excellent the storytelling in the first three seasons were. I can’t imagine anyone watching these first four episodes and crying over Aoi’s failure to climb Mt. Fuji, or Aoi and Hinata’s reconciliation on a mountaintop after a falling-out, or any of the truly wonderful moments that made me fall in love with this show when I first watched it.

  So you’re left with a reader’s digest of past events that were done better elsewhere and a new story that lacks the production quality to do justice to its own big moments in the same way. And unfortunately, it doesn’t help that I’m not the biggest fan of the new aesthetic this season is going for. Look, superimposing anime girls onto stylized photo-realistic backdrops works for some cute girls shows- Yuru Camp, Bocchi the Rock just this season- but YamaSusu’s visual strength has always been tied to its gorgeous background art and how well it portrays the lush wonder of the wilderness without being so detailed that the more simplistic character designs get lost in it. There’s a clear sense of identity to how this show used to look, and that identity is just lost when you replace that meticulously crafted background art with random wilderness photos. Maybe if the production hadn’t been so stretched thin, they could’ve made this aesthetic work better, but as is, it never comes together in a way that makes up for losing the old look.

  But hey, just having eight full-length episodes doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker. YamaSusu’s first season was literally less than two full episodes long, and season three was the equivalent of six 24-minute episodes. This show’s done plenty of incredible things with less time on its hands. So there’s no reason Next Summit, for all its production woes, couldn’t have still knocked it out of the park. But there’s another problem, a problem far less forgivable than spending one-third of your runtime on recaps that can be easily skipped if you can’t be bothered. And that problem is simple:

  Unlike seasons past, Next Summit isn’t a story.

  See, Yama no Susume, for all its cute shenanigans, is an actual ongoing narrative at the end of the day, moreso than most shows of its genre. Sure, it meanders here and there, but at heart, it always remains focused on Aoi’s personal journey through the medium of mountain climbing, and how her relationship with herself, her friends, and the world around her changes as a result of her experiences. It infuses every inch of this show, from its episodic divergences to its lengthy, impactful arcs. Even back when the episodes were only twelve minutes long, you’d rarely go for more than a couple episodes back to back without some kind of meaningful moment for Aoi. It’s a slow-paced story to be sure, and it isn’t afraid to go on a few tangents, but it never forgets to return the focus to Aoi and the path she walks before long.

  But in Next Summit? It feels like it’s made up of nothing but tangents. Even with the full-length episodes, every episode is still split into two parts, so you’re basically getting two normal-length YamaSusu episodes back to back that never amount to anything beyond their own boundaries. The girls go fishing with Aoi’s dad in one half episode, they meet Hinata’s mom in another, Kokona and Honoka have some heavy yuribaiting that ultimately goes nowhere in another, and Aoi has some bizarre fakeout yuribaiting with her co-worker from the sweets shop in yet another, completely unrelated twelve-minute chunk, and none of it ultimately connects to anything else. It’s all just a bunch of moments, strung together in an arbitrary order because there’s nothing for these moments to build to, no ongoing emotional journey the narrative seeks to take us on. Sure, plenty of these larks are entertaining in and of themselves, but they’re momentary delights in a show that used to excel at long-term investment. What happened to the Yama no Susume that spent like four long-term episode’s worth building up to, paying off, and cooling down from that first harrowing climb up Mt. Fuji? What happened to the show that let characters’ emotional states develop and linger over multiple episodes, even when those episodes didn’t necessarily connect with each other plotwise? It’s not until the very final stretch that this season decides to have an ongoing story again, and it feels like everything before then was just killing time until the show decided to actually be about things again.

  Actually, hot take time: I think Next Summit should’ve been a movie, not a TV production. The more I think about it, the more I feel like so many of the issues holding this season back would’ve been fixed by jumping on the bandwagon and making it a movie like every show and its mother has been doing recently. For one thing, it would give the animators a more flexible schedule to really give it the production polish it deserves, rather than try to air it alongside an animation-heavy sports shonen like Blue Lock. For another, it would force them to cut out so much of the faffing about and keep the story focused on what it should’ve always been focused on: Aoi’s personal journey. Cut out the recap episodes, extend the emotional focus of those last couple episodes over 90 minutes, maybe pepper in some of the better one-off half-episodes and tie them in more closely with the main story, and you’d have a tight, focused package full to bursting of everything that made this show so amazing. Wouldn’t that be so much better? Wouldn’t that keep the spirit of Yama no Susume alive like it had never left? Shows like Yuru Camp and Takagi-san have shown how to make movie sequels to slice-of-life stories really fucking work; surely, a team as talented as the YamaSusu folks could’ve done the same if they thought of it. Maybe if they had, I could come out singing its praises as much as I so desperately want to.

  Because my god, the actual finale of Next Summit is so good. It’s a payoff to arguably the biggest unresolved plotline in this show, a climax to its most emotionally resonant arc that brought the fireworks in a way nothing else in Next Summit even came close to. For one brief, shining moment, I saw the Yama no Susume I remembered again, the Yama no Susume that showcased the best of what CGDCT shows are capable of. And it made me cry not just from how good that ending itself was, but how sad it made me that it took until the very end to recapture the spirit that once flowed freely through this show like a boundless river. If the only reason this season was made is to deliver that climax, then it’s more than earned its right to exist. But I just know it could’ve been- and should’ve been- so much more.

  And if this season was your introduction to Yama no Susume? Then all I can do is beg you to please, please, please track down and watch the first three seasons. Everything Next Summit does well, the rest of this show does ten times better. Every bit of emotion Next Summit makes you feel, the rest of this show will make it seem like child’s play. Season 4 is only the barest taste of the magic that makes Yama no Susume so special, and if you’ve felt any bit of that magic watching it, then you owe it to yourself to experience it in its true form, free and bursting and absolutely astounding on a regular basis. I promise you, this show will sweep you away like few other slice-of-life anime can. Season 4 was a good time, but it just doesn’t do justice to one of the finest works of cute girls fiction you’re liable to ever find. But hey, if it can at least convince more people to check out the rest of Yama no Susume, then maybe it’ll all be worth it in the end.

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• 

  DanielSonic

  70/100
  These are my incoherent ramblings about an above average show where girls climb mountains.

  I binged the first three seasons of this show in a week just to talk about this season. it wasn't all that worth it, but I'm doing this review anyway. This won't be a full-on review, as I will only talk about the aspects that stand out to me about Yama no Susume. ___ #Watch-Order Yes, there's a watch order to this slice-of-life show—kind of. The first four episodes of Next Summit are recaps of the previous three seasons, and those seasons (unless Crunchyroll is trolling my non-subscriber ass) aren’t available on legal platforms, so I just want to give some options to anyone interested in this obscure climbing show. Watch episode one of Next Summit over the first season. Even though each episode of Season One lasts only 4 minutes, they somehow feel like they drag on for hours. Not only does it shave off 20 minutes of your time to watch episode one of NS, but the story feels more concise. It's the other two seasons that are the problem. Episodes 2 and 3 do a good job summarizing Season Two, but Episode 4 removes many more interesting aspects of Season Three. Overall, if you want to get the full experience, you'll have to sail the high seas, but I’m sure you can watch Next Summit just fine without prior knowledge. It's kind of an FMA Brotherhood situation in that sense. ___ #Visuals Warning: Nerd Emoji Moment While I only started watching the show this November, I’ve known about Yama no Susume for years from the clips uploaded to Sakugabooru. Although the show never garnered any attention with its first season, the second and third seasons are some of the most beloved productions for Sakuga nerds, featuring the work of some of Japan’s most beloved animators. Next Summit still has those high production values previous seasons had, but it doesn’t feel as special as Seasons 2 & 3 were. A lot of my enjoyment from watching the original series was appreciated the animation and later finding out “oh, this scene was animated by this guy” or “oh, this entire episode was animated by that guy”. There were some episodes in Next Summit that gave me that feeling, like the first half of Episode 5 which was animated by Norio Matsumoto of OG Naruto fame. Episode 7 also had some big names, like Masami Mori, Takeshi Maenami, and even Studio Trigger’s Kai Ikarashi. However, outside of those two episodes, Next Summit didn't impress me as much with the animation aspect. Luckily, the show still boasts great visuals regardless, with some gorgeous backgrounds that bring the world around the characters to life. ___ #So, why did I care enough to write this review? There's one thing Yama no Susume does right above anything else; it makes you want to climb a mountain. While I liked the other slice-of-life of this season, Do It Yourself, it never inspired me to pick up a hammer and start making something. Yama no Susume feels different because it ties into humanity's natural search for beauty. I know I'm looking too far into it, but hear me out. Nothing beautiful lasts for very long. Most people look at the _Mona Lisa_ for 15 seconds before moving on to another painting, and I'm sure the _Mona Lisa_ took way more than 15 seconds to make. So much work has to be made just to see something beautiful for 15 seconds, yet we never get tired of searching for beauty. That's how this show portrays mountain climbing. Yeah, it's a lot of walking, it takes a lot of planning, and you can get altitude sickness, but if you get the chance to see that sunset at the mountain's peak, it's worth it. It just doesn’t express that beauty enough. The show tries to introduce new characters for the audience to connect with every other episode. While its characters can be very entertaining (Hinata's mom is very fun addition to this season, despite being in only one episode), it’s not enough to distract us from the most engaging moments, which are the climbing. ___ Overall, if you like cute-girls-do-cute-things, you'll like this show more than I did. It wasn't as memorable as previous seasons were, but I'm sure someone will find some enjoyment in it.
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• 

  DekorationXanNex

  90/100
  Yama no Susume season 4 expands on, gives us more of, and absolutely celebrates everything before it.

  Acknowledging it here, the first four episodes are a recap of the first 3 seasons, which even if I may not like, isn’t something I’m going to really focus on in this review, but I did want to mention it

  Yama no Susume’s fourth season in many ways is a culmination and celebration of everything before it. What started first as 4 minute shorts, then became 12 minute half episodes, then a full length special, has now come around to a full length regularly scheduled series. This culmination of accumulated time since its 2013 beginnings has allowed the story to blossom, and for its characters to really show how far they’ve come, just as the length of episodes have grown, so too have the characters.

  __ Encouragement of Growth __

  Yama no Susume is a culmination and celebration of everything before it, even from the people working on the show, having past members of the team come back around, having previous artists and fans of Yama no Susume come to work for the show, and the exceptional scheduling and production leading to cases like an episode having finished 2 years prior to this season’s airing. A lot of this information is documented across various sources, from sakugabooru’s main writer (kVin on twitter) to informed reddit posters (yes, reddit) who have direct links to their sources. In fact many of the reddit discussion threads are a goldmine of information with detailed staff information and work notes, showing the absolute effort that goes into making the show, through location scouting, climbing mountains themselves, and even well documented production of the music from the channel YamazoJP, where you can see them making music for the show.

  Does this celebration of the show, of the art and creation of anime, matter so much to the story of Yama no Susume? Some may not see it at so, and to the literal story, maybe not, but to me it’s greatly important. Knowing that the passions are there go a long way.

  It’s now not only a solitary journey of seeing the characters grow, a very important theme to the series as whole, but a journey of seeing the team behind the show grow, of seeing how far they’ve come since its 4 minute origins. In a growing age where people debate AI generation as art, I find a great deal of importance and humanity in the people behind these projects showing that love in such outward ways. It’s one part of why a show like Healer Girl is so important to me, or Bocchi the Rock, in that the creators are so open to the love of their work, to the passion that oozes off of these stories and how palpable that is in the production.

  __Encouragement of Equipment__

  But, to move beyond discussion of the backend passion of artistry, I don’t want to take away from the actual show and story we got from Yama no Susume season 4.
  One of the best parts of this fourth season is getting closure for a lot of growth and development from Aoi. Her journey has come a long way, from failing to climb Mt Fuji in season 2 and starting to make new friends in season 3. But at the end of the day, she’s still the awkward, often reclusive, and often quick to think about quitting person, as she had been since season 1. What this fourth season does is expand on that and give us even more development on those previous points.

  We see this in the recursion of certain plot points, such as Aoi having to go shopping for new mountain climbing equipment. Each successive trip expands to reflect the state of her journey. She first has to buy a backpack, which will allow her to actually carry gear and necessities to climb. Then she needs a jacket, which will allow her to brave the weather and conditions after now being able to go on those journeys in the first place. Later on she even has to find a job, her character going from lounging around to actively funding her own hobbies shows how much she’s matured. Season 3 has her buying shoes, now that she has more experience, she can start making upgrades to her equipment, having proper footwear is quite important, but it wasn’t something the show had given much consideration.

  Season 4 is no different, expanding on yet another shopping trip, which, spoilers, is another backpack. The very first thing she had to get when she first started has now come all the way around and she’s picking one out for herself. The arc of her journey has met itself, but this time, she’s far outgrown who she used to be. She’s gone through various failures, learned lessons from those failures and hasn’t stopped climbing despite the allure of quitting constantly following her.

  It’s awesome seeing this along with other plot threads expanded on in this season, such as giving us yet another mini arc where she has to climb a smaller mountain for training, and seeing how her mindset changes and deals with these familiar situations. Yama no Susume season 4 doesn’t simply take old plot threads and reuses them, but takes them, complicates them, and shows just how far the characters have gone.

  __Encouragement of Friends__

  Another big factor of the show isn’t just Aoi, and it’s of course the breadth of friends surrounding her. We get more Hinata, we get more Kokona, and we even get more Honoka, a relatively newer character, who prior, had been slowly integrated throughout season 3 but has now even more specific moments dedicated to her. A lot of the cast gets more moments like this, even if the reach of them all aren’t always as explicit as Aoi.

  We get to see Hinata seeing Aoi make strides to have more friends and not feel jealous but it’s not like we get a whole dedicated episode to her. We even get a whole new character that while very fun, is just that, a fun addition to the cast, that fleshes out a bit more of their school life, but we don’t get the same breadth of emotional threading from her.

  Regardless, just like with the prior seasons, season 4 allows the exterior cast more chances to shine. Some of them get some really well needed attention, like Aoi’s co-worker, and others are just vibing with the gang, like Aoi’s new suite of friends who still aren’t as fleshed out but add a nice colour and flavor to Aoi’s life regardless.

  __Encouragement of Climb__

  Four seasons in, and the main formula of Yama no Susume still remains strong, the formula that you might expect having watched the prior seasons, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 

  We have episodes showcasing the characters in a more light hearted way, this is still a slice of life, but in those moments we can get a great deal of growth and characterization.

  We have episodes where we go through these smaller arcs, mountain climbing, the main “action,” and these episodes similar to prior seasons do a great deal of expanding on the hobby aspect of the show and having the characters grow and learn with it.

  And, as is the hallmark of this series, it does not skimp out on the production, from the beautiful vistas, the well animated character acting, to the serene pieces of music that trace the emotions within a scene.

  Yama no Susume season 4 expands on, gives us more of, and absolutely celebrates everything before it. It is the next summit. And it’s here.

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