Furu Anime Panikku

I’ve always wanted to watch Koizora ever since I knew that it was coming to Singapore. Nope, it wasn’t because it was some box office top seller. It was for 4 reasons that I watched Koizora.

• Music

The theme song, Tabidachi no Uta by Mr Children and the insert song, Heavenly Days by Aragaki Yui. I love both of the tunes, especially the latter. Aragaki has a really sweet adolescent voice, and whenever I tune in to her music, it gives me a really comfortable feel.

Heavenly Days

• The setting of the movie

The movie was based in countryside Ooita in the Kyuushuu region, and I was more than keen to view more scenes in Ooita.

• High School Romance

I did say before that I am a sucker for high school romance Jdoramas, and the same logic applies for Japanese movies too.

• Aragaki Yui

I guess this is self-explanatory

And so, I finally did watch it, yesterday.

Here’s a summary of the entire movie.

Mika(Aragaki Yui) is a girl who has never fallen in love before, but when she loses her handphone before and gets it back, her summer holidays were occupied with phone calls and mails from a stranger. It turns out that the stranger was a schoolmate of hers, Hiro(Miura Haruma). They soon fall in love and before long engage in sexual activity. Just as their relationship was going on well, Mika was kidnapped and raped by a group of guys instructed by Hiro’s ex-girlfriend, Saki, as a form of revenge. Hiro gets all furious and goes out to get revenge, but the matter was no longer further pursued when Mika was pregnancy test was negative.

They soon engage in more sexual activity, resulting in Mika getting pregnant, but she loses it after a fall caused by Saki’s push. Devastated, she and Hiro both “built” a grave for their unborn child and promise to go back to it annually on 24th December, the date of the loss of their child.

Soon after that incident, Hiro started avoiding Mika, and they eventually break up. Mika gets another boyfriend, but is still in deeply in love with Hiro. When she discovers that Hiro was avoiding her because he was diagnosed with cancer, she leaves her poor boyfriend to be with Hiro in his last days. Hiro dies, and Mika has to to continue living on strongly in this world.

I can’t believed what I just did, squeezing a movie that was slightly longer than 2 hours into 3 paragraphs. As usual, I butchered the value of the film. Call me Evil King of Film Butchering!

Now for my opinions of Koizora.

The underage sex, rape and pregnancy in Koizora was criticized by many to be exteremely obscene. However, I do not agree with those critics a single bit. On the contrary,I felt that it suited the movie’s theme rather well. After all, such things are actually happening in real life in Japan, and personally, I felt that the portraying of such themes serve as a wake-up call to people about teenage problems in reality. Not many romance movies are able to do that. One thing I should mention was how fast it was before Mika and Hiro got engaged in sexual activity. That was rather unnatural, considering they had only met a couple of times before they started having sex.

The story also had a couple of unrealistic flaws too, such as Mika’s family not pursuing the matter by going to the police when she got raped. I can’t believe that the whole matter was dropped just like that. Also, Hiro’s portrayal as a victim of cancer was rather fake, considering that he could still party around smoking even though he was diagnosed with cancer in the second year of high school. Even when he was in the hospital, he didn’t look all sickly, with the only thing showing the audience that he was diagnosed with cancer being his beanie hat with hides his “bald head”.

Despite this story being said to be derived from a “True Life Story”, I have this gut feeling that it was made up. I’m not saying that the story sucks though. Fictional novels have good storylines too, and in this case, the story was rather decent, considering it being a Keitai Novel.

One thing that always disturbed me was the high school students in the movie. They all looked like idols, even the nerdy girl in glasses. Even though they look their age in the movie, the girls are hawt. The guys are decent eye-candy for the female audience too. Why don’t I have such schoolmates even when I’m of the high school age? Either Japan has too many hawt high schoolers, or it’s just the movie. Although logic would prompt me to think of it as the latter as the answer, I think that the former would be a rather decent answer as well.

And finally, the part which justifies this post’s title. The scenes where the audience flooded the cinema with tears.

This guy’s a nice guy

Most of the audience in the cinema that I was in were weeping away ever since Mika got back with the Hiro after she broke up with her second boyfriend, Yu. The crying proceeded on all the way till the end of the film. Of course, I was not one of those who cried together with the audience. I did feel like crying though, when Mika broke up with her poor boyfriend who was an extremely nice guy. How often can you find a guy who is willing to help you resolve your family problems? I really pitied the chap and wanted to cry out for his sorry state, but it was a pity that I was in a public cinema, so the tears just wouldn’t flow. Nice guys always finish last, I guess.

The audience in the cinema was a real pain in the ass. If you want to cry out loud during the movie, I don’t really mind. After all, it was a movie that moved 11 million people to tears. However, the audience yesterday was trying to screw up the entire movie for me by laughing when they cry to hide their sobs. That is extremely disturbing, and the mood was totally screwed up after they started with their retarded antics. Those fools. I guess I need to buy the DVD and rewatch this at home alone, with no distractions or mood distractions. For those interested, the DVD is released on 25th April, the same day as Evangelion 1.0. Maybe I should just grab both of them together.

Other than that, I felt that the rest of the movie was alright, but not exceptionally touching. I guess my feelings for the movie are totally differing from the rest of the crowd, since no one was crying during the breakup in the snow scene mentioned above. I didn’t really see why Hiro should have hidden the truth from Mika. The truth would come to light someday, and Mika would eventually pain and sadness for his misfortune. Instead of hiding the truth from Mika, and putting her through days and days of torturous unrequited love, he should have just revealed the truth and happily spend his last few years with her, rather than his last few months. Logic just doesn’t seep into such romance movie’s. After all, if it does, where’s the drama the general audience seeks?

Besides all the teary scenes, there are some sprinkles of humor in various parts of the movie, and some of them were rather hilarious, such as Hiro’s reaction when Mika told him that she was pregnant with his child.

The storyline aside, I felt that the scenery in the movie was really breathtaking. The sky and the rivers never looked so good in 3D movies. I should seriously find some time and money to make a trip to Japan’s countryside for scenery appreciation. Ooita would be good =)

Overall, Koizora is worth a watch for everyone. Females get to flood their cheeks, and males can join in too. Even if you an insensitive male, you get eye-candy! For those in Singapore, please set aside 2 hours of your time and catch Koizora. I can assure you that it will be an enjoyable 2 hours.