With
Valentine ’s Day rolling around I thought it would be cute to spend the next week
reviewing an array of romance movies that you could spend your Valentine’s day
watching (If you have nothing better to do like me). I am actually not too fond
of the clichéd romance, and usually like a good physiological drama or mystery.
But I put myself through the ringer watching as much shoujo adaptations and
romantic comedies as I could bare to write my reviews on. If you’re like me and
you don’t care too much for a sappy romance, then I am here to give the real on
what movies you should sit down and watch on Valentine’s Day night.
Blue Spring Ride (2014) is one of the
number of shoujo adaptations that were released this past year. I’ve never read the manga and being familiar with
the general format of shoujo manga’s, I will say that my expectations for this were
pretty low. Usually, the female protagonist is simple-minded and weak-willed
and she ends up liking a male protagonist who is stoic, cold, and cleverer than
she is. I wish I could say this Blue
Spring Ride was far from my expectations.
 |
| Ao Haru Ride, the manga the film is based off of |
The
plot line is simple enough, in middle school Futaba Yoshioka like a meek boy
named Kou Tanaka. After inviting her to the summer festival he moves away
unannounced and they lose contact with one another. In high school they both
meet again, but Kou has changed his last name from Tanaka to Mabuchi and he is
no longer the nice and gentle boy that Yoshioka remembers.
 |
| Kou in the past |
This
movie fails for me in so many ways. The big
problem of this movie starts with Futaba Yoshioka’s (Tsubasa Honda) character.
We don’t get to know much about her outside of Kou Mabuchi (Masahiro
Higashide). It says a lot that I watched an hour of the movie before I realized
I didn’t even know her name. I never learned anything about Yoshioka, nor did I
witness any growth in her character. She
is flat and underdeveloped and you ultimately end up feeling no connection to
her character. On top of that Tsubasa Honda, who played Futaba Yoshioka, sometimes
spoke with this odd high pitched voice that irritated me to no end. I never
understand why Mabuchi admired her so much because she never does anything very
admirable. They are both just holding onto this childhood crush that they’ve
had between one another. Even in the flashback scenes I never get the
impression that they knew each other well enough for Yoshioka to have the
authority to pry into Mabuchi’s life the way she does. Yoshioka keeps
questioning why Manbuchi has changed, but what person doesn’t go through
drastic changes from middle school to high school?
 |
| Kou now |
The
film tries to build this progression in the relationship between both
characters, but ultimately it just looks like a montage of scenes of different
things that happened in the manga that resonated with the readers. The scenes
don’t correlate into complete and cohesive storytelling, and in exchange I
think some scenes that were ultimately vital to character development are lost.
I stuck it out until the end, but a half an hour into it I couldn’t bear to see
any more.
 |
| first time Yoshioka sees Kou |
It
felt like the movie was going through the motions, but it failed to pull at any
heart strings. For me Higashide’s portrayal of stoic was robotic. Not for one
second did I buy into the internal grief he was facing. I’ve seen him in
Parasyte previously, (his role was smaller), and he was much better in that. For the sake of time it seems that the subplots
of their friends also got put on the back burner (Shuko, Aya, and Yuri). Their friendship
is another things that comes off as forced by the end of the movie.
This movie is ultimately disappointing. I can predict
that even if you have read the manga, it will not live up to expectations. I
force my sister to watch it with me, and she wasn’t too impressed either. If
you are a die-hard Shoujo fan then maybe you’d enjoy this, but even this is a
stretch.
Let me know if you had watched Blue Spring Ride and what you thought
about it!
I normally don’t rate films
but to keep with the Valentine’s Day spirit I’m rating all the films I’ve
reviewed this week by 5 hearts. By the end of the week I’ll have all the films
in a ranking of which one’s I’d recommend you’d watch the most to the least for
Valentine’s Day.
❤ ❤ 💔 💔 💔
