Summer Pockets
Summer Pockets is a Japanese visual novel developed by Key, a brand of Visual Arts. It was released on June 29, 2018, for Windows and is rated for all ages. Summer Pockets is Key's 13th game, following its previous games such as Kanon, Air, and Clannad. An expanded version of the game titled Summer Pockets Reflection Blue was released on June 26, 2020, in Japan. Both the original game and Reflection Blue have been ported to iOS and Android devices, and Nintendo Switch. Reflection Blue has also additionally been ported to the PlayStation 4. An English version of the original game for Windows was released by Visual Arts in 2020. The story is set on a fictional island on the Seto Inland Sea and follows the life of Hairi Takahara, a young man who uses the recent death of his grandmother as an excuse to escape to the island after an unpleasant incident. Once there, he gets to know the townsfolk of Torishirojima and multiple girls who are the focus of the story.
The gameplay in Summer Pockets follows an interactive branching plot line with multiple scenarios, and focuses on the player character gaining the favor of the four female main characters; this is expanded to seven in Reflection Blue. The game's concept is by Jun Maeda, but he did not write the scenario due to similarities in themes with Air, which he primarily wrote. Although Air also features a rural, seaside setting during the summer, the development team aimed for Summer Pockets to have a different feeling to it. Nostalgia and the maternal bond are prominent themes in the game. An anime television series adaptation produced by Feel aired from April to September 2025.
Gameplay
Summer Pockets is a romance visual novel in which the player assumes the role of Hairi Takahara. Much of its gameplay is spent on reading the story's narrative and dialogue. The text in the game is accompanied by character sprites, which represent who Hairi is talking to, over background art. Throughout the game, the player encounters CG artwork at certain points in the story, which take the place of the background art and character sprites. When the game is completed at least once, a gallery of the viewed CGs and played background music becomes available on the game's title screen. Summer Pockets follows a branching plot line with multiple endings, and depending on the decisions that the player makes during the game, the plot will progress in a specific direction.There are six main plot lines to experience, which is increased to ten in Summer Pockets Reflection Blue. Four of the six plot lines are initially available in Summer Pockets, and seven of the ten plot lines are initially available in Reflection Blue. Throughout gameplay, the player is given multiple options to choose from, and text progression pauses at these points until a choice is made. Some decisions can lead the game to end prematurely, which offer an alternative ending to the plot. To view all plot lines in their entirety, the player will have to replay the game multiple times and choose different choices to further the plot to an alternate direction. All heroine routes are available when first playing both Summer Pockets and Reflection Blue. In both versions, each heroine will disappear from the game's title screen once her route has been completed. When all of the heroine routes in either version have been played at least once, an additional scenario called Alka is made available. Upon the completion of the Alka route, another scenario called Pocket is made available, which serves as the true conclusion to the story. In Reflection Blue, Umi's route becomes available after the completion of Pocket. In both versions, once Pocket is completed, all heroines reappear on the game's title screen.
There are two minigames featured in Summer Pockets and Reflection Blue. The first is a table tennis minigame that takes the form of a quick time event where the object is to click one of the circular indicators on the player's side at the moment when the ball hits it. Successive hits on any of the indicators will result in the filling of an intensity gauge and will increase the number of indicators from three to five which frequently change position. Successive hits on any one indicator will change its color from blue, to yellow, red, purple, and finally a multicolored "Super Shot!!" indicator. The accuracy of the clicks is scored from good, to great, and finally excellent. Play continues until either the intensity gauge is depleted, resulting in the player's loss, or until the player has accumulated enough points to knock out the opponent. In Reflection Blue, the table tennis minigame now also features doubles matches with the same basic mechanics.
The second minigame is an intricate catching and battling game called Islamon. There are 100 different Islamon to catch in 10 separate locations around the island with 20 kinds of bait. Any bait can be used in any location, but only one to four kinds of Islamon are available per bait, per location. The encounter rate for each Islamon also depends on the bait used in a certain location. For example, using Sugared Water in the Mountains results in a 25% encounter rate for a Cabbage Butterfly, but using the same bait at the Beach results in a 30% encounter rate for the same Islamon. The encounter rates for Islamon range from 5–100%. The player starts with three kinds of bait and three locations to set them. At first, the player can set two traps with bait per day, but this can increase to five per day depending on the player's rank.
A player can battle with their Islamon against an opponent twice per day, with each player allowed to use up to three Islamon per battle. Each Islamon has both a star rating from 1–5 and one of three types—Water, Wind or Earth—where Water beats Wind, Wind beats Earth, and Earth beats Water. Players customize their stock of available Islamon and choose which ones to battle with and in what order, but the rest of the battle occurs automatically. The goal of the battles is to increase in rank among 35 other individuals, and defeating an opponent will result in switching ranks with them. This continues until the player achieves rank 8, and from then on, the player can only gain one rank with each victory. Once the player defeats the players ranked 7 up to 2, the player can then battle the rank 1 opponent as the final boss. Unexpected events can occur during battle based on the relationships certain Islamon have with a given opponent.
Synopsis
Summer Pockets is set on an isolated, rural and peaceful fictional island on the Seto Inland Sea called Torishirojima. Among its residents is Umi Takahara, the daughter of Hairi Takahara and Shiroha Takahara. Shiroha possesses a cursed power that foretells her death and dies when giving birth to Umi. Fearing of Umi inheriting Shiroha's cursed power, Hairi takes Umi away from her hometown and forbids any connection with Torishirojima and her mother. This sabotages their bond, yet Umi still manages to sneak on the island and awakens her power, inadvertently travelling through time back to July 2000, when her parents first met.The game starts in July 2000. Hairi Takahara uses the recent death of his grandmother as an excuse to come to Torishirojima to take care of her estate sale. Once there, he gets to know Shiroha Naruse, who can foretell the future and believes she is cursed and intentionally alienates herself. Besides Shiroha, there are three other girls who are the focus of the story. They include Ao Sorakado, who is pursuing the legends of the island; Kamome Kushima, a high-class girl looking for a pirate ship; and Tsumugi Wenders, a younger girl trying to find herself. Hairi also lives together with Umi under the pseudonym "Umi Kato". Hairi is never assigned the task of estate sale and instead dates the girls. Umi, in the meantime, repeatedly tries to approach her mother Shiroha without success, forcing her to abuse her power and relive the summer multiple times. During this process, her power is waning and she is constantly deteriorating.
After all heroines' routes are completed, the game automatically starts a new iteration of the summer of 2000. Umi's power has been severely weakened such that she can hardly make complete sentences. She insists on playing house with Hairi and Shiroha, on which they agree. Umi's true identity is also exposed to them accidentally. After the summer, Umi's power is depleted and she cannot materialise herself. She watches everything in spiritual form and hopelessly witnesses her mother's death, also discovering that Shiroha is not foreseeing the future. Instead, she is also stuck in a similar time loop that rewinds herself at death, and she is simply having flashbacks of events that happened in past loops. Realising that in order to save her mother she must prevent her from gaining the power in the first place, Umi gathers power from her bloodline and attempts one last rewind to Shiroha's childhood.
Umi arrives in Shiroha's childhood in an alter ego named Nanami. Shiroha has just lost her father in an accident, and her mother simply disappears shortly after. Taking shelter in Shiroha and her grandfather's house, Nanami accompanies Shiroha through her hardest time and successfully prevents her from gaining power. However, such action drastically rewrites the future, putting Umi's very existence at risk. Shiroha ultimately uncovers Nanami's identity, and Umi dissipates in her embrace.
In the new summer, Hairi arrives in Torishirojima to take care of his late grandmother's estate sale, but literally spends the whole summer doing so and fails to develop relationship with anyone. However, at the end of the summer he has a brief flashback of Umi and the past summers. He makes a last-minute decision on the departing ship to meet Shiroha, who later agrees to teach him how to make fried rice. An extended epilogue in Reflection Blue clarifies that afterwards Hairi and Shiroha still become a couple and Umi finally reunites with her parents who are alive.