This review contains spoilers for The Tunnel to Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes movie

Gonna be real honest here, the trailer looked promising, and the premise is one of those supernatural and drama story with a meaningful message. The movie had the potential, but it failed to do so.

1. Animation (8/10)
Studio CLAP is not a really well-known studio with very few works in the past, so my expectation wasn't really high but still, the animation is one of the things that shine in this movie. The colours and contrast fits for each scene, especially the sceneries, the overall color tone is pretty gloomy which fits with the sad atmosphere of the movie (for the most part) The shots inside the tunnel looks really unique and mesmerizing and creates a feeling that this place is from another dimension. Character design is also pretty normal too with nothing much to say. For instance, here are some shots from the movie:

2. Soundtracks (8.5/10)
The music in this movie are very emotional, Eilli is the singer for the song Finale and Pre-Romance and these 2 songs fits perfectly with the overall tone of the movie. Overall the OST and theme songs of the movie fits incredibly well with the movie and characters, they are sad songs and gives off the vibe of a tragic love story.

• Playlist of all OST in the movie:

▶ - Finale + Pre-Romance songs: ▶ ▶

3. Storyline (4/10)
Note: The English subtitles for the movie is currently messed up, so the score and opinion in this category might be biased
This is unfortunately where the movie has the most problems with. Both Kaoru and Hanashiro's character development throughout the movie practically made no sense at all, and there are a lot of unexplained events in the movie. Their first encounter was at a train station on a rainy day, where he offered her his umbrella. They exchanged contacts with each other so that she can return him his umbrella, but it didn't take until the end of the movie for her to do so? Despite them meeting up several times throughout the entire movie to explore the tunnel together, why didn't she return the umbrella then, but have to wait until they meet at the end of the movie? What's even more confusing is the fact that they are both in love with each other, the buildup to this feels really empty and practically non-existent. Throughout the entire movie, all the interactions between Kaoru and Hanashiro doesn't really justify a close enough friendship, all they did was explore the tunnel together, going to the aquarium together, Kaoru complimenting Hanashiro's manga, and that's pretty much it... In other words, it was simply just a mutual interest (being the tunnel) that brought them together, besides that, there's basically no real major events that would lead to the progression of their relationship. Another problem has to do with the tunnel itself, there's not much explanation of the tunnel either. All we know is that time in the tunnel works differently to the real world, there's no background information like the origin of this tunnel or some people's past experiences with it. The trees in the tunnel greatly intrigues me too but either it's the subtitles, or no info is given on them either. My guess is that those things on the trees are like fragments of memories of the people who have gone in this tunnel, or something like that.

At least the backgrounds of Kaoru and Hanashiro is portrayed decently, with Kaoru's family being broken apart ever since the death of Karen, the little sister, and Hanashiro getting kicked out of her house by her parents due to them not accepting her dream of becoming a mangaka in the future. Kaoru's struggle with coming to terms of his little sister's death and Hanashiro's courage to overcome her fear of the future. They both have their own struggle and desire, and both of them share the same interest to use the tunnel to make their dream/desire come true.

Overall, it might be due to the english subtitles being messy that my experience with this movie is ruined, however, the problem likely comes from the anime itself, not the source material (as according to this comment), due to the length of the movie being not enough to flesh out the character development and events.

EDIT: After finishing the light novel, I can confirm that the movie skipped 90% of the content from the ln.

This is a movie that I really wish I could put a higher score since these kind of premises is something that I absolutely love.