Monday, May 27, 2024

A bit of apprehension

A live-action adaptation movie of からかい上手の高木さん (Teasing Master Takagi-san) will premier this Friday. This movie is a continuation of the recent live-action adaption drama series (8 episodes on TBS), but it will be set 10 years after the end of the drama series, with Nishikata now a PE teacher at his alma mater, reuniting with Takagi-san when she arrives at the school as a trainee teacher.

My experiences with such "10 years later" sequels have been mixed. On the one hand, we have the Laid-Back Camp movie that managed to creative an original sequel set X years later after the girls' time in high school. At the same time, we have the disaster of the live-action adaptation of Whisper of the Heart (my review here, plus additional thoughts here), where the movie had adults who behaved like teenagers.

While I am very excited to catch this new movie, I cannot help but feel apprehension that this will turn out like Whisper of the Heart, with the characters, who are working adults now, behaving like teenagers. I mean, Takagi-san's teasing of Nishikata would work when they were in junior high school, but if 24-year-old Nishikata acts like 14-year-old Nishikata, we would all think he has some mental development issue. Especially after watching the trailer... I really really hope the trailer used those scenes to capture existing fans of the series, but the characters in this sequel movie have actually grown up mentally and not just physically. I mean, it would be nice to see how Nishikata got together with Takagi-san in the end, since this was not covered in the manga, but it would be just lazy writing if they decided to make the 24-year-old Nishikata and Takagi-san, who are teachers now, act like there were still students in junior high school.

Keeping my fingers crossed... 🤞


No comments: