Bakuman
Library Wars post will have to wait because I'm sorting out lots of things in my head for that one. In the meantime, I watched Bakuman today. I find it always interesting to watch for audience demographic. Bakuman is a seinen manga live action, so normally you'd expect to see, well, dudes. I did see some dudes, but there were more ladies than dudes, and with variety of age too, not just teenagers. Definitely lots of manga fans watching this movie, but I don't think I'd be wrong if there are people just watching it for Sato Takeru. As for me, I started to read the manga some time ago, but I didn't manage to finish it, though, so there may be some aspects that are missing.
In short, Bakuman is the fast track story of how to become a full fledged mangaka, with the 2 rather geeky high school kids, Mashiro and Takagi. Mashiro knew more about manga world as his uncle was a mangaka and at the same time saw all the ugly sides of the world. Together with Takagi as his teammate, he aimed to have a serialization at the weekly Shonen Jump (the magazine where 98% of your favorite anime come from). The story shows us definitely not the glory side of being a mangaka. It's all about the blood and sweat effort put into 1 manga chapter for Shonen Jump and not to mention about the competition with other mangakas. At the same time, the story also shows us the glimpse of manga culture in Japan.
I find that again, this is one of those well-done live action, story-wise. They know that you cannot fit 20 volumes (not chapters) of manga into a 2 hours movie, so they chose the scenes wisely, not trying to cram almost about everything into the movie and ended up messing up lots of things. Definitely they include enough of necessary scenes for the story. They tweaked Mashiro's proposal to be done in school instead of late night at Miho's house. They also cut the scene whereby their classmates ridiculed their effort to short cut into the manga world. To be fit into a movie, they use a totally new manga work, not the same as the ones used in the manga itself. They definitely include the scene whereby Mashiro was hospitalized due to overwork, but the situation itself is again tweaked, and they don't sprint the story up to the end of the manga's storyline. Thank goodness, they don't use the time gap to catch up with the manga. Another interesting thing that I notice is they like to use soft light with the scene between Mashiro and Miho and it makes Miho looks dreamy from Mashiro's point of view, and they kept it this way until the end, as if to show that Miho will be always Mashiro's dream. To me, it's understandable because they don't have the intention to have the ending the same as the manga. The movie closed its curtain with the graduation and the birth of the serialization, which was the hit series in the manga. I'd say that's a very well done and thought through sliced & diced, not half baked at all. It makes a difference to a movie overall experience. They balance humour (lots of it), rivalry, angst, and more importantly the spirit of youth - viva seishun! (afterall our main lead characters are high shool kids), which is the foundation of the manga.
Having Sato Takeru as Mashiro, a high school kid, is really pushing the limit. His face is too mature already, especially when you put him side by side with Kamiki (it makes the poster obviously photoshopped LOL). BUT, when you see the acting and the chemistry, to say that he's too old for a high school kid will end up as whining and nitpicking. The teamwork is so good and I totally forgot that these two were Kenshin and Soujiro. Well, not entirely forgot when they have 1 scene where Mashiro and Takagi wielded pencil and pen in the manga battle scene with Nizuma (yes, all CG, but it's so cool, and the result of doing Kenshin movies shows). I love the over the top geekiness for these two and it's adorable, especially after the hard work that they put through. They always scream histerically when something major happened along their path, together, and that makes us as the audience rooting for them even more. Since this is a manga-themed movie, they had tons of scenes of drawing manga (well, what do you expect), so definitely both of them had training of drawing manga, eg. using the G-pen, inking, coloring, etc, and for them they also have to make it look realistic (which was done very well) and cool.
I find this movie proves me that Sato Takeru is getting smart in choosing his roles. He's been in a number of live action adaptations until now, and the latter ones were all well made. We have Kenshin (still the best live action movie - the whole trilogy - as of now), Kano-Uso (I personally love this one), and now, Bakuman. I'm not saying that BECK is a disaster and heck, I even cried over ROOKIES, but compared to the his latter roles, these two becomes a so-so live adaptation. With that, I'm looking forward to his future projects!
So, you're thinking of seeing this movie to see prestine looking Sato & Kamiki, well, this is not the right movie as most of the time both of them are covered with ink and with dark circles, ha! But overall, it's a really good movie about youth, the spirit of friendship, and off course, manga!