A Fantastic Event at an Abnormal Time
A high school girl's affections are torn between a fellow student and her homeroom teacher in 2017's Daytime Shooting Star (ひるなかの流星). It's a pretty lightweight romantic comedy that very gently flirts with the idea of a high school girl dating one of her teachers, a bit more conservatively than After the Rain. The film is filled with safely cliche beats but the leads are genuinely cute and charming, particularly Mei Nagano as Suzume.
Suzume's a girl from the country who goes to live with her uncle (Ryuta Sato) in Tokyo. She's overwhelmed by the city and faints when she spots a shooting star in the daytime. A scruffy young man catches her who turns out to be a friend of her uncle's--as well as her new homeroom teacher, Shishio (Shohei Miura).
On her first day at school, the nervous but earnest Suzume finds she's also sitting next to a handsome boy named Mamura (Alan Shirahama) who gallantly offers to share his text book with her. But he recoils when she accidentally brushes his hand and cgi gives him a fierce blush. It turns out he's deathly afraid of girls.
Suzume also makes a female frenemy, Yuyuka (Maika Yamamoto), who has a crush on Mamura. In a pretty standard scene, Yuyuka tries to pull a prank on Suzume but, when it looks like she'll be caught in the act, Suzume covers for her, and the two are friends after that. It's amazing how cliches can cross cultural boundaries.
For most of the film, it feels like Suzume's going to end up with Shishio and Yuyuka's going to end up with Mamura. That would be a pretty radical outcome, though, in a country where I just read about the latest four teachers to be arrested for sleeping with students (and I hear about a lot more that don't get caught). It's a sad problem. Girls should be free to innocently fantasise about this stuff without adults who take advantage of their innocence.
I watched this movie because many students recommended it to me in the letters they wrote to me. Now I know why they kept asking me if I like Mei Nagano. She's cute. With her big nose, she kind of looks like Setsuko Hara. For some reason, the kids aren't thrilled when I recommend Mikio Naruse movies from the '50s.
Daytime Shooting Star is available on Netflix in Japan.