Koizora

Alrite. Be prepared to warm the seats enough to cook an egg if you’re watching this movie cos it’s 2-freaking-hours. That aside, it was absolutely worth every cent I paid!

Oh. Please remember to bring a hankie too because most people who watch it are just going to sob. I swear. At least that is what I observed from the volume of sniffing and crying in the cinema.

I was anticipating this movie ever since I saw the music video for one of the theme songs, “Heavenly Days” sang by Aragaki Yui on MTV. Maybe it was just plain because it was a Japanese movie (I’m a sucker for Japanese items, shows, food etc etc) or maybe because of the nice scenery or maybe because of the cinematography. I finally watched it today and it was fantastic!

*spoilers ahead*

It was dramatic, it was soppy, it was a little unrealistic but who cares when it is oh-so-romantic! The plot is a little cliche… Pretty, quiet girl (Mika) meets handsome hooligan (Hiro). Scared of him at first but falls head over heels in love with him at the end. Have sex, gets pregnant and then a miscarriage. Boy’s bitchy ex create trouble to get him back. Boy finds out he has cancer and makes the girl leave him by hurting her. Girl falls in love with another guy who is the exact opposite of the main lead. Girl then finds out her first love (main lead) is dying soon and leaves the new boyfriend. Boy dies, girl attempts suicide, saved by 2 doves (which is sort of implied in the movie that is sent by the spirit of her ex).

But what makes this movie successful is the talented cast (even the supporting characters were great), beautiful cinematography, great timing and the novelty of this story.

For peeps who didn’t know, Koizora is actually a film adaptation of the now extremely popular cellphone-novel, which can be downloaded from here, if you understand Japanese. Apparently, the story hit 10 million downloads within a year of it being posted on the site.

Written by Mika, an amateur author (Koizora is her first) and possibly a millionaire now, who is totally anonymous and untraceable, claims that the story is based on her experiences and that it is a true story. Now that is a little unbelieveable for me because her life must be really dramatic. She actually experienced gang rape, pregnancy, miscarriage, love, death and all is just a short 3 years, strictly speaking 2 years actually. Gosh!

I was amazed that the Japanese media did not try to dig up juicy details of the author’s personal life or at least try to justify if this story is true. If this setting were to be changed to Hollywood, I am pretty sure that the author’s background and whatsoever will be dug up within days. Just goes to show how much privacy is respected in Japan.

Me being a 21-year-old female, is not too interested with the sex in the movie although I was a little sceptical because the characters were supposed to be like 15?! But then again, the scenes were done very tastefully without going too much into the details so it didn’t seem like a major scene in the movie anyway.

The main male lead, Miura Haruma, looks a little like Ambrose Hsu, in my opinion although definitely more good-looking than the latter. I prefer him with the blonde hair or the beanie though. The brunette look just didn’t do it for me. Ok. Digression.

Anyway, Koizora is so popular that there’s so many merchandise such as the book version, manga, the film (of course!) and now a side story; Kimizora, written from Hiro’s point of view. There’s even a set of couple rings on which a quote from the movie is engraved, albeit in French.