Love Scenario (2010)

Bad writing: Makes you scratch your head at times and lacks scenes therefore the pacing also sucks

Just rewatched it, I do not remember it being this bad. I don't hate this movie, I like watching flustered adorable faces and I liked seeing Shiina do those. I'm saddened that this is like his third and last romcom. Iirc (1; Antique, 2; Artificial Beauty) Fukada is just again often in her usual unrealistic pouty/"cute" faces.

I don't hate the movie but it is just generally unsatisfying and not immersive, that's why it's bad for me. The romance was lacking. Btw, I have put a lot of spoilers below. And I am also sorry, my 'review' is likely confusing. I have a lot to say and I'm just not good at explaining. I wasn't angry while writing this, just disappointed, a bit annoyed, and confused or baffled.

If you like awkward romance like me, you can get through this.
(I thought such genre would be called pure romance but the term is just its literal definition which imo is just bland, it sounds unexciting )
I don't think I would watch this again for the third time. Maybe I will, to see Shiina's acting here again.

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The writing is terrible, like what do you mean the fictional character you wrote falls in love more because she isn't supposed to. What? Isn't it more like because she's emotionally neglected and have never fell in love for real that she falls in love more.

The love logic or wisdoms the movie mentions are kind of distasteful. Even mentioning 'law of forgotten toys' something, where if someone wants what you didn't want, suddenly you want it. And the female lead says 'love is like that'. I can relate to that but bruh, that's not true love. It's more like realization of the good of the person. In the movie, it showed moments featuring the male lead's reactions referencing that view way before it was mentioned. However, it doesn't work well or properly, because there was only 0.1% chemistry between them that happened before he reacted that way. I am not sure what the movie is saying during those moments. I believe, they were trying to show that he was jealous. Meanwhile, I'm watching and being like; bruh no way, he's probably worried because she's a woman, she's kinda naive and acts brattish (with an understandable reason), and the guy who's approaching her is a two-faced ignorant dude.

I mean, why would he be jealous in those times when there had been nothing yet good shown about her or a moment showing he's catching feelings before. He was just puzzled in the beginning and in the middle, trying to do his job. If anything and I were to rethink, the female lead would be the one catching feelings first when her strong views in love was first challenged---when they had that argument on the boat.

How the female lead writes her 'story' was also stupidly done. The movie wants to show a reality that she actually had written a good story but from the audience's perspective it's dumb---well, the description says it's a 'love comedy' and one of the parts they decided to attribute some of the comedy is to a script within her script that makes little sense. Even the male lead admits some parts were unnatural, but everyone in the end is like, yayy wowweee awesome storyy. The bad writing of her 'good writing' makes the supposed comedy for it, generally unfunny. A few parts, I could see could be laughed at, like the ridiculous appearances of the 'fictional characters' in some 'fictional scenes'.

For clarity; the female lead is writing a story (B) within another story (A). Both stories suck, you really won't care about them or be excited but it still makes you cringe whenever it appears. Story B is supposed to have funny parts, the 'comedy' I was referring to. Story A, is just a melodrama, the romance that happened there kinda makes sense... but let's just dismiss the mentioned reason that heroine in story A fell in love with male lead because she isn't supposed to--- the better and should be reason is that she's in a loveless and 1950s conservative marriage and never fell in love 'for real'.


Another thing, the movie attempted a fake-out. The female lead closes her laptop as she gives up, then a pan to her office without most of her stuff that were present when she closed her laptop. Wait... is the movie telling me she's leaving, going somewhere else far away? Nah, after the almost completed script was approved, we're back to her office and she's there writing for its finale. Girl, what happened? Was there a cut scene? Shouldn't we have been first shown instead that Shiina urgently meets Fukada and let her know of the good news?

Lastly, the confession scene sucks. There was no build up. I mean like, the movie didn't even flesh out further Shiina's feelings near the ending. The confession just seemed random.

Ok next, the main leads: Shiina Kippei and Fukada Kyoko. I am not good at determining the quality of acting. What people find bad acting, I often never thought it was so.

However, Fukada's obviously not good again. The voice she uses is grating to my ears. Regardless, her voice always doesn't convey emotions well when speaking. It was decent in the beginning, her voice wasn't grating---notably, parts where she spoke coldly and clearly conveyed annoyance. But as the movie goes on she's back to her usual low quality. Shiina was alright---like, it's not unsatisfying, it's enough. I love awkward main characters the most and I just love his role in the movie.

Overall, did Shiina's character convince me that he loves Fukada? Yes, but the execution is just so poor.

In the beginning, I don't think he likes her. Especially, when they introduced his 'rival', the movie gives frames of Shiina's uncomfortable face because of that rival to supposedly hint romance but before that, it didn't give us anything that Shiina actually has interest in Fukada. All he has been doing was just his job---including those 'date' scenes, all of it was just for his job. So how could he react like that? If it's because the law of blah blah blah, I find that illogical as I did say that there were no good moments that would bud love from Fukada yet.

In the middle, yes. Bro smiles when Fukada has some establishment take care of his clothes (laundry + new clothes). I cannot tell if it was because of the translation but that action was just random tho. The laundry part and excuse "The assistant of Taniyama should be clean" I get it. However, why would you buy him new clothes? All he did was just watch everything you wrote that he hadn't seen yet. I couldn't make sense of this part but it did not lessen the fact that Fukada has begun budding feelings.

In the end, like I said, the confession was just huh, that's it? Like, what made bro want to confess in that moment?

How about Fukada? It's kinda the same. I have much to say about Shiina's because he had more of the focus. Fukada's character, I think her feelings only began as she saw Shiina's actual genuine efforts to help her, which was the middle.

I don't hate the movie, it had only me stretching my lips like Luffy and scratching my head. And parts that made me do so, I've mentioned here. I love Shiina's character, Fukada's was okay. Both romance and comedy wasn't great. Personally, romcoms are fine even if they aren't actually funny because I just realized something. I realized romcoms are just a type of lighthearted romance and the lighthearted romance is the best part of romcoms for me, not the comedy---Jdrama romcoms only make me laugh a few times.

Overall the movie is not engaging, inadequate to the heart. I don't know how I was satisfied by the ending a few years ago. The movie lacked enough points of which deep dived the internal feelings of the characters. The best scenes for me are just the characters' reactions or the faces they showed.

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