My Love Story - JMovie

If it’s one thing I’m a fan of it’s the adaption of manga into anime and if you’re lucky enough (and under the right circumstances) the adaption of anime into live action. There’s just something satisfying about watching still figures come to life and the voices in your head be brought out into reality, even if they sometimes sound slightly different to what you’ve expected. Of course this isn’t to say it’s ultimate satisfaction all the time. In any case this time for me it most definitely is.

My Love Story (Ore Monogatari) the live action movie was probably one of the better adaptions from anime that I have witnessed in a while and I must say I’m glad I stumbled across it, without even knowing it existed. The innocent love story of a boy/man-bear that blossoms on the screen was beautifully brought to life in the movie and while there were similar scenes pulled through from the anime, it still was able to hold its own with a little original flair here and there as it stayed true to the overall journey that the adorable Takeo Goda goes on.

Following the same storyline we see as our kind-hearted, monkey-looking teenager saves the life of a girl from another school and promptly falls in love with her, only to have his affections dampened as he suspects the girl to be in love with his cool and handsome best friend who always seems to attract the girls. Though he struggles with the conundrum he has placed himself in we see how truly a great human Takeo is as he sets himself aside in order for the one he loves to find happiness with another someone he cares for. Honestly, such self-sacrifice is rare and admirable but in this case possibly the most sweetly foolish thing our hero could have done.

As reality would have it, the girl, Rinko Yamada, is indeed in love, star-struck even, but not with the prince-like human that our brute suspects. Instead, we see the story unfold in a way that has us, though at first suspecting, eventually confirming that she is smitten with Takeo. Of course our two leads are overly ignorant of the obvious, even when it comes to simple conversation, and it takes his good friend, Makoto Sunakawa, to show Takeo what is really happening.

The movie is lovely and a joy to watch, especially when you realize the overused- love triangle thing is nothing more than our lead’s imagination and not a plot device to fully influence the story as most dramas tend to push. What makes this story stand out is the appreciation it shows for good friendship and the sweet progress of innocent first love.

Even more brilliant is how well the actors brought to life their anime counterparts, a feat not very well done in many adaptions in the past. So it becomes a pleasure to see the natural way the actors portray the characters that once only seemed fictitious before being made just a little more real. A very well done job in the casting I would say.

My favorite scene though, and I doubt I’m the only one, was the one you had to wait to see at the end of the credits. This scene, so highly anticipated from the anime, was no doubt cringeworthily worth every second it played out. I honestly look forward to possible sequels, though I’m skeptical it’ll have any. Either way, this was a movie well worth my time and feels.

Border - JDrama

Where do we go when we die? It’s an interesting question, one with many varying answers that I find quite intriguing and tend to research from time to time just to kill time. But whatever the answer may be, I’m sure the recent drama I watched would make it one very dark and gloomy place.

Border is a Japanese drama that was released in 2014. One of the many JDrama’s that was on my backlog, I find I’m glad I finally got around to watching it. The series has a somewhat dark tone to it and despite my expectations, which weren’t much aside from the general good acting I always know to expect from the lead actor, I found this drama quite surprising.

The series follows a detective that gets shot while on duty but survives the fatal wound with one strange twist; the bullet that gets lodged in his head allows him to see dead people. Though a fairly predictable plot twist, this drama takes the scenario and paints it with a dark and gloomy brush as it follows our detective as he goes back to work, using his newfound ability to solve crimes and confront the evil that exists in the world around us.

The episodes were interesting and each one seemed to take the detective deeper down a dark path as he strayed further and further from using ‘normal’ methods of solving crimes and instead turned to much sinister ones that aided both his ability and efforts to catch the bad guy. That is until it led our poor strung out detective to the ultimate cross roads.

It’s an interesting observation as you watch the detective’s character change so drastically due to his newfound ability that he seems to attach a somewhat curious responsibility to, very interesting indeed and very engrossing to watch. It reflects a rather sad reality that sometimes the bad guys might just beat the good guys, despite the supernatural advantage on the good guy’s part and that maybe, just~ maybe knowing that little detail might just drive you over the edge more often than we’d like to admit.

Yeah, this was a very thought provoking drama. It might have been dark and gloomy, but I guess that helped as it brought its solemn message across. I reckon it’s worth watching, I mean it doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves the bad guys have their good days too, right?