[Jmovie] Koizora
Posted in movies | Tagged as: Aragaki Yui, Koide Keisuke, Miura Haruma
Koizora
Starring:
Aragaki Yui as Tahara Mika
Miura Haruma as Sakurai Hiro
Koide Keisuke as Fukuhara Yu
Karina as Minako
Usuda Asami as Saki
Haru as Aya
Nakamura Aoi as Nozomu
Koizora is a very interesting mix of a pure first love story mixed with an over the top soap opera. Aragaki Yui plays an innocent girl-next-door type of girl, Mika, who meets through…interesting circumstances, Hiro (played my Miura Haruma). He’s a bit of a delinquent, as evident with his bleached blonde hair and biker older sister, but the two fall head first into love. They face many trials as a couple including (but not limited to) rape, pregnancy and jealous exes.
The movie was based off a cell phone novel that was later sold as an actual novel that sold millions of copies. The novel was written by first time author Mika, who supposedly based the novel off her own life. I say supposedly because I’m not sure if I quite believe that all these things can happen to just one couple. I enjoyed the movie for the most part, but there were its fair share of faults. Although the movie does span a time of 4 years with another time jump later on, there are so many overly dramatic events crammed next each other that the better part of the film feels like you’re on a roller coaster.
I mainly watched this movie because there’s a drama adaptation coming out for the summer season and wondered what exactly it was about. I read mostly positive responses about it, but very short, things of the ‘really great, I cried!’ variety. And I love a good romance story myself, so I checked it out. I can definitely understand why some people would cry, as it can be quite a tearjerker if you’re prone to crying during dramas or movies (I’m not, though, so I didn’t). After watching the film, I am looking forward to the drama. The drama will (hopefully) better space out these events, so it will less of drama stacked right on top of each other. And provide some side stories of the minor characters, always a plus in a story (for me at least).
I hope the leads in the drama give as good of a performance as the leads in the film did, though. While by no means groundbreaking, the two have a nice chemistry and are very charming in their roles. The film is also quite pretty, with some beautiful scenic shots. It’s set in the countryside or what seems to be like the countryside, which is quite picturesque. It’s a pretty interesting mix, though, of kids from the country, but are still quite hip and very Tokyo-esque.
While I did enjoy Koizora, a lot of things felt very over the top and sometimes like it was just a drama fest. Fans of this genre and of the leads will definitely enjoy this film, though, as it was quite sweet in many moments. Hopefully, the upcoming drama will be able to fix the faults in time-spacing.
Buy this movie: Malaysia DVD (Eng subs) | J Premium Edition