Ojo to Banken-kun (2025)

Bit weird // Kinda funny?

If you can ignore the horrendous age gap then this is actually an enjoyable movie. I found myself laughing audibly several times!

I know it's based on a manga (which I have read) and unfortunately in the world of Japanese mangas it is almost encouraged to explore the taboo. Isaku and Keiya have a 10 year age gap which isn't a bad thing except that she is 16 and he has quite literally raised her. I found the romantic scenes were a bit awkward to watch and I found it hard justifying why a 26 year old FULLY GROWN MAN is interested in a teenager. To give Keiya some credit, for the bulk of the film he does say he doesn't quite know what these feelings are that he's experiencing. I dunno, it's still feels weird to me.

Very reminiscent of "18-sai Niizuma, Furin Shimasu" so if you could handle that then this would be maybe the PG version.

It was refreshing to see Jesse in a serious but gives-me- butterflies role (although he does briefly break character and honestly I loved it). The pierced ears and dark hair really suit him. Fukumoto Riko's acting isn't amazing but it's a big improvement on some of her previous performances I've seen. Bonus points for cast because they had Sugimoto Tetta and Sasaki Nozomi. And Kanon & Matsui Haruna played their roles as Isaku's friends perfectly! So cute.

Music... I am heavily biased as a fan of SixTONES, but I do think "Barrier" is truly a great and catchy song. It matches the tone of the film well and it got me through the last little bits.

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Icky romance but kind of entertaining

This Japanese movie is centred around the romance between a young highschool yakuza family heiress and her adult bodyguard disguising himself to protect her at school. If I did not find it boring, I for sure also found the romance icky from start to finish...

I certainly can watch and enjoy a wide variety of romances : from very cute and fluffy to ultra dark and taboo... However, unfortunately it did not work for me here. The romance took the regular shojo road of pretending that problematic stuff are adorable and charming when in fact they were just not. I have nothing against age gap story per se, but here the following combination :
- 10 years gap between the main lead (26 years old) and the female lead (hypothesis of 16 years old as she is in her first year of high school)
- grooming
- overpowering main lead yakuza
was a bit much to sell as "cute". The fact the male lead is also a real jerk sleeping around while pining for the heroine certainly also did not help...Overal that's a lot to take in for the viewer to root for them !!!

Acting was overall average, with male lead being simply a big block of wood! Honestly, if I found him more handsome maybe I would be less severe but well, he is not exactly my style so better acting chops would definitely have helped. Female lead is better but nothing extraordinary...and definitely looking too old for the highschooler role... However, given the plot, I guess it is for the best because otherwise the romance would have felt even more unpalatable.

I would not recommend this to people as I feel there are better high school romance movie out there. In order to work better, the storytelling should either have remove the gap age aspect, either the tone of the movie should have be much darker without the classic shojo style to showcase properly the relationship, the gaslighting, the imbalance in power.

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