Honey & Clover - Live Action Movie
January 21st, 2007 by Shirukii
Ah, finally subbed, I had been waiting for this ever since it came out in theaters in Japan. Being a live action movie, I kept my expectations low as they seldom, if ever, manage to be as good as their anime/manga counterparts. However, this one ported over fairly well.
Plot
From what I can remember, the movie is adapted from only the first season, so nothing about Morita’s past or the whole Hagu ordeal was covered. The movie took random bits from the first season are taken and compiled in a random order, and also added a few scenes that weren’t in the anime.
Obligatory Hagu shot
One thing that struck me as odd was that the cast didn’t seem to be friends at the beginning of the movie. Everyone had a rough idea of who everyone was, living under the same roof and all. But the bond between them seemed to develop as the movie went along, as opposed to having already been established from the beginning in the anime. Hell, Morita didn’t even know Takemoto’s name at the start of the movie.
Of the scenes that were taken directly out of the anime, there was:
- Beach/Onsen trip, complete with Morita’s soy sauce wallscroll
- Yamada’s piggyback confession
- Takemoto’s bike journey
They were each slightly tweaked, but in essence those scenes were cut and paste from the anime.
If I had to pin a main storyline to the plot, I suppose it would be the Morita, Takemoto and Hagu love triangle. A large portion of the movie was concentrated on Morita and Hagu interacting as both love interests and aspiring artists. Other than that there’s also the implied rivalry between Morita and Takemoto, though nothing really erupts between them as it did in the anime.
Bye bye ¥5,000,000
The rest of the movie was dedicated to random parties and a seemingly rushed attempt at examining the Yamada, Mayama and Rika love triangle.
While managing to somewhat mirror the non-linear “slice of life” feel that the anime had going for it, the events in the movie seemed less like a depiction of everyday life and more like randomly chosen snippets of youth. Although…trying to compress around 8 hours of anime into a 2 hour movie leaves you with no other choice.
Characters
While the characters did not get nearly as much time to develop as their anime counterparts, they managed to be relatively faithful and the acting was (surprisingly) not half bad.
Takemoto: Never would have thought possible, but the live action version of Takemoto is even weirder and more awkward than in the anime. Though not as indecisive, his inability to cope with conflict and decisions is still apparent. And even when he does manage to gather courage to say…ask Hagu out for lunch, he looks like he’s about to fall on the ground and start seizing up.
I also don’t like how his bike journey was done, it was taken completely out of context. In the anime he left because he was at a loss as to what to do in life, on the verge of graduating and not knowing what to do afterwards, he sets out to “find himself”. However, the movie does not do enough to stress that he is confused in life, and the timing of the scene made it seem like he was running away because of Hagu.
Morita: Morita was just scary X_X His insanity in the movie went horribly wrong, he came off as arrogant and overpowering whereas in the anime his insanity is more on the playful side. He was also much more blunt in the movie, saying and doing whatever he felt like, as opposed to the anime where he playfully avoided conflict.
Mayama: Wow they really took his stalker tendencies to the limits. He stalks Rika, acknowledges that he’s stalking her AND recognizes that it’s wrong. He goes as far as the gather random things that Rika has used and save them in labeled zip lock bags which he hangs on his walls -_-”
He also looks MUCH nerdier than his anime counterpart.
Someone should call the police…er, the real ones
Mayama stalks Rika
Yamada: Another stalker -_-” Same infatuation with Mayama as in the anime, same confession, and interestingly enough…same oversize eyes O_O.
Yamada stalks Mayama
Rika: Rika’s only role in the movie is as a stalking victim, poor girl =(
Coincidence my ass, this must have been awkward
Mario/Luigi: *cue mario bros. theme* XD Uh…not much to say about them, cept they might be gay (Uguu~! shock-u)
Nazi cat mascot:
*Kyon sigh*
Thoughts
Not a bad movie overall, I’ll probably burn it and toss it with the rest of my anime to be dug up and watched one day. If nothing else it brought back wonderful memories of watching the anime series, which I have a strong urge to rewatch right now, but alas I have too much backlog and school work to do so D=.
Damn. I wish I was an art student…
~ Shirukii ~
20 Responses to “Honey & Clover - Live Action Movie”
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I agree with much said. I was really bothered by their lack of connectivity within the group yet in the end, because it made me want to rewatch the series, I still thought it was rather enjoyable. Maybe it’s becuase Aoi Yuu is playing Hagu…
Live Action movies don’t tend to turn out well compared to the their anime counterparts. Mainly due to the time constraint of a movie. Though if this was a tv series I think it could be done well, like Hana Yori Dango.
Compared to the anime, it’s not very good.
As a film in its own right, however, it’s quite enjoyable.
Their version of Morita I didn’t like to begin with, although he grew on me. Mayama was far too nerdy and there’s no way you could imagine him doing some of the things the anime Mayama did.
Shuuji and Rika, while they seemed quite good, were hardly in it.
I thought Hagu was good though.
The best bit, for me, was when Hagu and Morita were painting in the yard. That was joyful.
@ Os: Pretty much exactly how I felt. Although…to be fair, the group did connect pretty well on the onsen trip.
@ Adun: Definitely, though as a standalone movie it wasn’t that bad. A live action drama would be cool, but sort of unnecessary since the anime did such a good job.
@ Dop: I never warmed up to Morita, even at the end I thought he was way too arrogant. Hagu was by far the bet char of the bunch, and that painting scene was awesome, too bad real university is nowhere near as fun T_T
Good film.(full stop) thats where it ends, the anime did much more than this film and the book was even better altogether( way better than the anime so if you liked the anime READ THE BOOK .. or manga :P) i agree with hagu’s character and i also thought yamada’s character was spot with her gloomy eyes lol. The hair was great on all characters but thats something that could easily be done, Morita’s character was so bad in this film he lost the fun he had in the book and anime :( (he was one of my favorite in the whole story but was ruined in this film).
The art used in this fiolm was amazing it brings back memories of my childhood and how much i loved to bring “invisible” to life XD.
For the music noone could have chosen anything better seeyin as the people i saw the film with kept talking about how much they miss the anime and how they were going to buy the spitz cd as soon as they got home.
Haha, yea, I would have liked to see more spitz/suneohair, but the music they chose was pretty fitting. As for the art, I can’t really comment, being artistically challenged in every sense…I couldn’t tell art apart from random doodles =(
Hi, do you know where i can download the movie? I’ve been looking all over for it… Thanks!
Torrent link removed, e-mail me if you can’t find it, I’ll point you in the right direction.
i tried downloading the movie,its about 8% done. so i tried playing it on DivX,but a message pops up saying to make sure this a valid video file. What does this mean?
You have to wait until it’s fully downloaded, or at least almost fully downloaded, the torrent system downloads files in tiny packets. Unless you have the majority of them, your media player won’t be able to load the video at all.
errr… shirukii. i downloaded the movie but no english sub. or should change my settings or smoething. please reply to mu email at prabuharan89@hotmail.com
How do i play the video file?
Email me: kyotochocobo11 [at] gmail [dot] com, I’ll do my best to help you out.
I love Honey & Clover so much that I watched first season & second season twice!!! I even watched the hidden chapters. I’m now reading the manga. I wrote a review bout honey & clover on this link http://myrandts.blogspot.com/search/label/Anime . If you guys are free, visit it & leave a comment,please? Don’t be a lurker,k? BTW, if i download the torrent, I should be able to use programs like UTorrent to download the movie,right? Please anyone,reply A.S.A.P, k? TQ (^__^)
Thanks for the comment, I read your review as well ^^ and left a comment.
Thanks man. Really appriciated it. Hope to hear from you more frequently & so am I…haha (^__^)
I watched the movie already! But it didn’t turn out as what I expected. Some of the characters we just not the same as the anime which was a let down. (T___T) The only few characters that I salute was Haguchan & Takemoto. The rest were just dissapointing. Oh yeah Maiyama & yamada was not to bad…{(T___T) But why Yamada didn’t use her fighting technique to finish mayama & morita…..} Overall they did an effort to make the characters real but only some of them made it. So if your a true fan to the series {Like ME!! (^__^)} then you will have to watch it. This will mark the end of Honey & Clover & will be in our memories forever…{company….SALUTE!!!!!}
That was very good!I like it!But, morita, er…little weird i think.
Yeah…they’ll always be in my heart.^^
Does anyone have the torrent with english subs for honey and clover season 1??
XP i can only find a brazilian/portugeuse one.. >
Hi,
Cool post. Keep ‘em coming.
If you have a sec, check out this commercial I was a PA on- an arena with currency personifications battling it out. Can’t believe it made it to Bloomberg TV!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK8WSNtCIN4
-Masa