Ya Boy Kongming! Road to Summer Sonia
Recap movies definitely have their issues. They’re a bunch of file footage taken from the series strung together to make a two hour feature film that gives you deja vu. 300 minutes reduced to 120. If you liked the series, you’ll love the compilation movie, but you’ll know what’s going down.
There are two secrets to watching recap movies: First, forget about it for long enough. Second: while watching it, watch out for the ‘oh yeah’ from the ‘ooo wow.’ The first is remembering what happened in what order. The second is those little tweaks they do.
Because only Eiko gets center stage at the end of it all in the original twelve episodes of Ya Boy Kongming! (PA Works, 2022). But in Ya Boy Kongming!: Road to Summer Sonia (PA Works, 2024), three artists get saved; Eiko who finally finds her voice singing voice par excellence, Kabetaijin; a rapper who has overcome his inner anxieties to rap-battle without fear, and Lady Nanami; a singer who had sold her soul to become lead singer to a successful pop group but not happy with what one loses to ‘succeed.’
The movie loses one edge. Kongming realizes his failure to bring peace to his kingdom as he lay dying (series). But in the movie, Kongming realizes how useless all of his war stratagems were from Wikipedia (this guy’s a fast learner) and sees his new life in the 21st century as an opportunity for himself through Eiko’s singing talent(s) which she thinks nothing of until tactician Kongming manages her career.
If we lose sight of Kongming of 9th century China, however we lose none of the music. The movie super condenses everything about this show into tunes (you’ll see when you watch closing credits). We only get a quick refresher on the Battle of Red Cliffs when Kongming bluffs 100,000 arrows from the enemy. More important is the Battle of Shibuya 109 where Kongming needs 100,000 likes to get Eiko into some music festival or another. The climax will be the battle of the bands: Eiko vs. Azalea, whose management group micromanages every aspect of their performance (three girls). In other words, Kongming can’t advance Eiko by destroying Azalea but rather liberating Karasawa’s girls from his tyranny.
What the movie does right is remove anything from the series that would slow down core plot development (though it does so with a heavy hand like giving gentle reminders about what happened in what order), and present us with that same lavish color scheme and tight animation we all loved about this show. And then they close out better: Eiko comes on stage fade to black. The final number has even a few bars for Kongming whipping up the audience. And then there’s sound, music,I think I mentioned this earlier. The heart and soul of this piece.
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