Summer Vacation 1999 to be broadcast on WOWOW Prime

Starting at 8:00 PM on Monday, March 6th, the film "Summer Vacation 1999" will be broadcast on WOWOW Prime.
This work was produced over 30 years ago. Although this broadcast is not on terrestrial television, it is a rare opportunity to see it after many years, so I personally hope you will watch it.
The film features only four boys spending a summer at a boarding school. Yu, who committed suicide in a lake because his feelings for the upperclassman Kazuhiko were not reciprocated, is the focus. The story begins that summer when a boy who looks exactly like him arrives as a transfer student. Even though it should be impossible for them to be the same person, his words and actions match those of the dead boy in every detail. The love and hatred of the four boys intertwine, and eventually, the end of summer arrives.

The four boys in this film, which is an adaptation based on Moto Hagio's "The Heart of Thomas," are all played by women. While it is not unprecedented for girls to play boys, I feel that very few works succeed in doing so (this is just my personal opinion). I believe this film is one of those rare successes. However, it is not that they are fully embodying or perfectly acting as boys; rather, the sense of poignancy that comes from them trying so hard to be boys but never quite being able to fully become them might be the real charm of this film.
Because of this, I think a world like that of a girls' manga, different from Takarazuka, emerges there. I recall that director Shusuke Kaneko also mentioned having such an intention.

Since the film, released in 1988, is set in 1999, it was depicted as a near-future story at a time when Nostradamus's doomsday theories were causing a stir in society. However, from the perspective of 2023, that world is in the past. New yet retro... aided by this slight paradox, the film has a unique atmosphere. I think it would also be fun to pay attention to the details of the props and such.

I hear that even now, more than 30 years after its release, the film is still loved by many fans. In light of that fact, Gekko Department Store once held an homage exhibition titled "Summer Vacation 2019," but I will write about that in a separate section.

Now, who is the transfer student who came to the boarding school on that day of summer vacation? Is he really the boy who was supposed to have died in the lake, or is he...? If he is, or if he is not, what is his purpose? I hope you will take this opportunity to see for yourself. You will surely enter a labyrinth of a single summer and never be able to leave it, just as many of the film's enthusiasts have been for the past 30-plus years.