Otakus in Love (Koi no Mon) review

The term romantic comedy has such negative connotations in the US that I literally cringe when I hear movies referred to as such. Usually they involve the flavor of the month It girl acting quirky to win the attention of some guy you’ve never heard of who’s just trying to prove himself economically viable to the movie studios so he can stop doing crappy movies and go do something he actually likes. They’re formulaic, generally awful, not particularly funny, and make husbands and boyfriends around the country groan with dejection whenever they’re forced to watch them. That being said, if more romantic comedies were like Otakus in Love being forced to watch them wouldn’t be such a horrific fate.

Mon Aoki (Ryuhei Matsuda) is a down-on-his-luck manga artist who can’t seem to hold down a steady job, partly due to his hobo-like attire and partly due to his stubborn belief that one day his art will actually sell. The only problem with that belief is he doesn’t draw traditional manga; he paints on rocks and arranges them in wooden boxes, a method that hasn’t quite captured the imaginations of rabid manga fans as of yet. One day while trying to find his way to the next part-time job he spots a particularly manga-worthy rock on the ground. When he bends down to pick it up (after an overly-flashy slow motion dive set to up-tempo music, of course) a young woman’s heel comes crashing down on his hand. After a hearty yelp of anguish her eyes meet his and his eyes meet her panties. Yep, it’s love at first sight. The moment is interrupted however, because she’s late for work at Tsugino Happy Inc., a company where nothing is tolerated but happiness (and complete subordination).

As fate would have it Tsugino Happy Inc. just happens to be where Mon has his new part-time job. The girl who stepped on Mon earlier, Koino (Wakana Sakai), recognizes him right away and following some dressing-down from their perpetually-enraged boss it comes out that he’s a self-proclaimed “manga artisan”. Being a closet manga artist herself, Koino immediately becomes fascinated by this bit of information, and in Mon. Due to a mishap with a quibbling co-worker his employment only lasts a few hours but before he leaves Koino invites him to her place for drinks. She gets him completely drunk and he wakes up the next morning believing that she’s made a man of him. Instead, she’s made him into a cosplayer. To his horror he realizes he’s dressed up like Yunsung from Soul Caliber II. Thus begins their topsy-turvy relationship complete with the mandatory “will they or won’t they?” overtones and the random mishaps and misunderstandings you would expect in a romantic comedy, albeit appropriately much more ridiculous. Things are never really allowed to get too sappy because whenever things start to go that way something will miraculously interrupt it, whether that be random vomiting or a random nervous breakdown. This film has, as one of Koino’s fans would put it, “a gift for reckless plot twists”.

It was fairly ambitious of Suzuki Matsuo, an actor/playwright, to make his directorial debut be a movie based on a manga based on manga. That’s a lotta bases, but he covers them all pretty well and shows he has an understanding of the medium. Instead of deviating the screenplay from the original Jun Hanyunyuu manga it was based on to seem more like a movie he instead made the movie more like a manga, with all absurdity and wild imagery left intact. The comic timing of the actors is dead-on at all times. Even simple lines like an inappropriately delayed “…WHAT?” end up being unexpectedly funny in the delivery. Sakai is perfect as Koino, constantly rotating personas from cutesy to distraught to seemingly insane to angry in the span of a few minutes. I honestly didn’t think Matsuda would be as funny as he is as Mon. I assumed he would be the straight-man in this film because usually he seems to take himself pretty seriously. I couldn’t have been more wrong though because even though his character is supposed to take himself too seriously he still manages to inject a lot of humor into his delivery and isn’t afraid to look foolish to accomplish that. The supporting cast is appropriately cartoonish and over-the-top making this a film that just never gives you a rest from its absurdity. Takashi Miike is even funny with his two total lines of dialogue. All that combined with a heavy dose of vibrant colors, a driving garage rock soundtrack, and one completely insane musical dance number make Otakus in Love just about as fun and irreverent as any movie I’ve seen in a long time.

View trailer (permalink)

Availability: Kadokawa Entertainment released Otakus in Love on Region 2, NTSC DVD on April 8, 2005. Check here for full DVD specs.

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