Insomniacs After School (君は放課後インソムニア) was adapted into an anime and is showing on TV right now (but almost ending soon, though). A live-action adaptation movie was also announced and I was quite interested to see how well it runs as a story. The movie premiered in Japan last Friday (23 June 2023) but I didn't managed to catch it until today because the movie is not screening at many theatres. Well, at least not at the nearest theatre.
Here's the trailer.
Here's an excerpt from the movie, when the main characters visited Mawaki Site.
Compared to other live-action adaptations like Let Me Eat Your Pancreas (the anime's English title is I Want to Eat Your Pancreas) I think the director was too ambitious. Let Me Eat Your Pancreas is a single-volume story, but Insomniacs After School is a manga series with 13 volumes currently containing more than 100 chapters. Trying to squeeze the story into a two-hour movie is going to be really difficult. For example, the anime adaptation has reached volume 6 in its first 12 episodes. The movie tried to squeeze the content of the first 10 episodes of the anime into the first hour of the movie. Instead of character development, it is more like a summary and can be very confusing to people who have not read the manga or watched the anime.
Instead, the director could have been a bit more selective, skipping over entire parts of the story and focusing on the beginning when our main characters got to know each other, (re)started the Astronomy Club, and then went on that trip to photograph different parts of the Noto Peninsula. This would make the story short enough to fit into two hours without rushing, yet still make some sense in terms of consistency. The live-action adaptation of Your Lie in April followed this technique and it didn't turn out bad.
In the end, the movie felt rushed in the first hour, and in the second half, when it tried to further develop the characters, it was hard to follow or feel any sense of empathy for the characters. In terms of the visuals and audio, there wasn't anything that made it a "must watch on the big screen" kind of movie too. It is more like a "watch on a streaming platform if you have nothing better to do" movie.
Update 4 July 2023: The anime series ended last night, and I must say I prefer the simple ending that the anime offered. The overall pace of the anime series was much better and it made use of the longer run to provide a story that developed the characters, ending at an appropriate part of the overall series. The live-action adaptation movie, on the other hand, was really rushed and ended with a slightly bitter taste.
