It’s been well over a year since I first watched the live action of Lovely Complex but I did watch it a few months ago so I’ll try my best to remember the events.

One - the anime is better, two - the manga is even better so manga > anime > movie.

REVIEW TIME

Main cast: Ema Fujisawa, Teppei Koike
Genre: Romantic comedy
Length: 100 minutes
Released: 2006

Synopsis
Koizumi Risa is very tall(172cm) for a Japanese girl her age, Otani Ryohei is abnormally short for a boy his age (156cm) and both have recently been rejected because of their height. In school, they are known as “All Hanshin Kyojin” because of their height differences and the fact that they are always bickering in a comedic way. Koizumi and Otani find that they have much in common and actually become friends but their relationship gets a little complicated when Koizumi realises she has feelings for him.

My Thoughts
I do love RabuCon, it was one of my favourite anime last year. The movie was my first experience of this story and initially I was in love with it… until I found the much much more superior manga.

First of all, the development and progress the characters made could not be shown in this 100 minute movie. I do understand this and they did too using a fast paced setup to their advantage, this movie zooms through 1 (more? can’t remember) year of high school using the seasons as the time shifts for the events that take place with each season having a significant event to do with Koizumi and Otani’s relationship.

So the movie does not do justice to the characters and to the relationships AT ALL but it’s still cute, flat but cute.

Being a romantic comedy it needs two things - romance and comedy (obviously) and I have to say the movie pretty much gave us both. It has it’s share of cheesy, corny and AWWWWW worthy moments especially the result of the basketball game which had me smiling for a long time, as for comedy, the movie does well in this aspect too. From the first minute I was laughing at the engrish narration (”when he eats, his OMELETTE!”) and characters that are wacky and fun (albeit one dimensional) are introduced one after another including my personal favourite - MAITY SENSEI! Whenever I see his actor I still crack up - YOROSHI-QUEEN! Ridiculously stupid scenes are present throughout and if these don’t make you laugh (or at least chuckle) there is no hope for you.

One thing I do praise the movie on is how it really does the manga to anime transiting well taking unrealistic and shoujo elements (e.g sparkle sparkle) and putting them to good use. So this movie is exaggerated and these SFX aren’t the only way, the acting is TOTALLY inexperienced and totally exaggerated. The only decent actor (acting wise) would be like MAITY SENSEI (but he is some kind of awesome) and maybe Teppei but everyone else is either overacting or not acting at all.

There are plot holes and illogical events galore so don’t take this movie seriously, you’ll get a lot more out of it that way, this movie was not meant to be analyzed and critiqued for its every flaw (believe me, there are a lot) but it’s fun, cute, lovable and if that’s all it’ll ever be that’s good enough for me.

Final Judgment
6 out of 10, it’s a good chic-flick and it’s fun but not very special. Go read the manga or something plox!