That Version of Summer

Non Non Biyori works because nothing happens. Four girls in rural Japan, no escalating plot, no stakes—just moments filmed with enough care that you feel something watching them. A conversation that loops back. Light on water. The particular exhaustion of walking somewhere on foot when trains are what you’re used to. It accumulates. You watch and without realizing it, you’ve let yourself believe that life could actually be this manageable, this good.

The film coming out this summer is called Non Non Biyori Vacation. The entire story is that the characters take a trip to Okinawa. That’s genuinely it. No hidden crisis. No reason the trip needs to happen except that it’s summer and they felt like going. When the trailer dropped, it was just more of what the show has always been—quick cuts of the girls in different settings, light on skin and water, moments that carry no narrative weight at all.

And I watched it twice immediately and want to see the film.

I think that’s honest about taste. I don’t need cinema to solve anything or make simple things seem deep. I don’t need the camera to work so hard to justify its own existence that it has to find some profound angle on watching someone eat ice cream. Non Non Biyori trusts that if you film a girl looking at the ocean with genuine attention, that’s enough. The whole show is built on that. Two seasons of it. And it works because it doesn’t apologize.

Maybe it’s the kind of thing you have to already want—already be someone who finds rest in unfolding rather than resolution. I rewatch it the same way other people rewatch comfort shows, except Non Non Biyori isn’t trying to be comfort in that manufactured, cozy way. It’s just life, rendered with genuine attention, and that matters to me in a way I don’t totally understand.

I’m going back through the seasons right now, ahead of the film. There’s something about a new release date that makes you want to prepare—or maybe it’s just an excuse to live in that world again. I’ll watch through multiple times before August. Probably watch the film the same way. Not because I’m chasing plot or revelation. Just because I keep wanting that version of summer to be true.