A Boy Who Wished to be Okuda Tamio and a Girl Who Drove All Men Crazy (2017)

"A boy who wished to be okuda tamio and a girl who drove all men crazy" was .... okay. I really liked the ending, where the character had a meal with his old self. I guess there was more in that scene than in the whole movie.

The main plot of the drama was not anything that we haven't seen before. And the story felt a bit flat and predictable. It was easy to read the characters, especially the leading lady's. Not that the performances weren't good. Both actors did an good job and they had chemistry. However, her character was a bit stereotypical.

So, overall, four out of ten.

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Interesting but not emotionally engaging enough

As has been made clear by other reviews on this page, one should not be expecting a cute romantic comedy from this movie, or they'd be disappointed. The point is not so much to root for the main couple but more to understand why they're having a rough time (which doesn't mean they won't or will end up together). I'm not even sure the characters are written to be that likeable, though we're meant to like Koroki enough to follow him through all this.

Akari, played by Mizuhara Kiko, is not a very likeable character. She seems fake, her mood changes constantly, and yeah, she's the type of woman that looks impossible to go out with. However, the type of crazy the men around her turn into is not on her, and I think it's impossible to really form an opinion on her as a "human being", because the whole movie is entirely presented through the eyes of its male protagonist, Koroki.

He's our narrator, all visual metaphors are meant to express his feelings, the movie is almost *entirely* told from his point of view, and he is a man that litterally described Akari's personnality with the words "you're my girlfriend". He never truly seems to learn to know her, so neither do we. We only see her as he does: an object onto which he projects his fantasies. Now, even knowing this, Akari doesn't sound super likeable, but what I'm saying is: the narrator is unreliable, and I think that's the whole point of the movie.

Akari only exists in the story through Koroki and *for* him, as an object of lust and desire but also as a tool to better himself, although he doesn't seem to realize exactly what he has to fix. I won't say more because of spoilers, but I think the movie takes Koroki's point of view to criticize it, and I find that interesting. Whether or not he does end up learning and "winning the girl", you shall see for yourself.

The issue is that while I liked the cast, and thought the movie had very nice visuals, very slick, as well as a cool soundtrack, I never felt very emotionally engaged. Akari is barely a character, and Koroki's point of view is more interesting than Koroki himself. I love Tsumabuki Satoshi, but even he didn't make me engage with him a lot. Secondary characters are hit and miss (some fun, some annoying) with more hits than misses, but it's not enough. So yeah, I was interested, but not emotionally engaged.

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