I’ve recently found myself drawn to media portrayals of summer in rural Japan, of which there are many. I think I’m feeling a weird sort of half-nostalgia. I’ve never experienced a Japanese summer specifically. But we’re suffering from a dearth of games about American suburban summers, and games like Boku no Natsuyasumi, Shin-Chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation, and Yo-Kai Watch portray childhood experiences that aren’t that far off from my own.
I used to spend summers at my grandmother’s house, running all over the neighborhood with my friends without adult interference through backyards, down to the creek, into the “woods” (really just a copse, but we were small!), through that one field with all the tall grass. We looked for cool rocks, climbed trees, ate popsicles, rode bikes in circles, and picked and ate mulberries. And there’s that cicada sound that’s always in such summer games, and the fireflies at night. Hell, the vibes are close enough that Tim Rogers did a whole six-hour video essay on Boku no Natsuyasumi and my own hometown.
I’m always on the lookout for more games that give me a little taste of that summer feeling, so I was drawn to a demo of upcoming indie Tanuki: Pon’s Summer at PAX West (there’s a free demo on Steam you can play now, too, if you like). Pon’s Summer is significantly different from any of my own summers: it stars a lazy raccoon working as a mail carrier in a rural town, trying to earn enough to restore a shrine before the end of summer, none of which I can relate to. But Pon does happen to own a sick bicycle. His is a BMX, unlike mine, but the way he rides it all over the little town and tries to do sick tricks with it is very familiar. The raccoon, oddly, is better than I was at popping wheelies, but I’m also about as bad at controlling him as I was at controlling my own bike. It’s funny. A little nostalgic!
Pon delivers the mail. He collects the packages each day and sorts them in his backpack, fitting the shapes together perfectly so he can carry them all at once. To uphold the dignity of the post office, Pon also helps with basically any odd job anyone wants him to do, and is encouraged to meander and goof off in between deliveries as long as they, eventually, get done. In the little scenarios I ran into with the townsfolk, that meant taking some photos for a creatively drained photographer and stopping by the local pub to help pour some brews. I have to tip the glass and get the foam pour exactly right to each patron’s specifications to please the barkeep. Add this to the growing list of activities I am humorously hopeless at.
I’m finding little to relate to personally here (for some reason no one let me pour beer as a child). Perhaps because this is a game about a raccoon more than about a human childhood experience. But I’m having fun. The raccoon is nice and round, so his activities on a BMX bike are inherently funny and seemingly also amusing to the all-human townsfolk. There are lots of little ramps and rails all over town to practice on, and some surprisingly difficult challenges strewn about such as riding through checkpoints as fast as possible or getting a certain trick score, a la Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, within a certain amount of time.
And taken as a whole, Pon’s Summer encompasses one feeling I did love from those youthful summers: this sort of meandering, ordinary freedom. When you become an adult, you get a job and no summers off, and riding bikes becomes exercise instead of fun, and people don’t let you run through their backyards anymore (well, maybe they just don’t let anyone do that nowadays). I don’t think I’ve aimlessly wandered through my own neighborhood since I was a teenager, and I can’t imagine a real-life scenario when I’ll ever get to do that again. Pon’s Summer is a light, cute way to recapture that feeling, just for a bit. So even though he’s a lazy raccoon, there’s a part of me that longs to embody Pon for a summer again: fall down, scrape my knees, mess things up a bit without serious consequence, stop and listen to those cicadas.
