"Orange" review: a real disaster for this live film!

After our opinion on the live action movie Fullmetal Alchemist, it is another adaptation that will be debated. We chose to return to a little sweetness with Orange, the work of mangaka Takano ICHIGO. Adolescence, regrets and time travel are invited into our lines! 

You will know everything about this live film and what to think about it in our company. A film that is aimed at fans of the first hour of manga, but also neophytes.

Orange

Original title: オレンジ – Orenji

Alternative title: Orange

Gender: School – romance – fantasy

Country: Japan

Release date: December 12, 2015

Director: Kojiro Hashimoto (Hard Nut)

Scriptwriter: Arisa KANEKO (Final Cut)

Original manga: Takano ICHIGO

Synopsis

Naho Takamiya is a second-year high school student. In the spring, she receives a letter sent by her herself ten years in the future. In said letter, she learns that she has fallen in love with the transferred student Kakeru Naruse. But a dark secret seems to surround him… Kakeru, whose mother committed suicide, bears scars. A love of youth died a year after their meeting. Full of regrets, the twenty-six-year-old Naho often thinks of him and therefore asks the Naho of the past to change the future so that Kakeru survives.

Main cast

This review contains important elements from the live action film and may therefore contain spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Erase regrets

The story of Orange could have been in a simple and classic register based on a school romance, as we are so often used to. However, what makes its originality and success is precisely the mystery around this group of friends united in two spaces time. Naho, Hiroto, Takako, Saku, Azusa will befriend Kakeru, a new student, but what they will discover about him, may change them forever… The newcomer is indeed bound to disappear from their lives in the near future. Afatal fate that our band will have to take into consideration in order to avoid it. Our heroine, Naho receives a letter written by her "me" ten years in the future.

It is at this moment that the plot switches since, many questions will come to germinate in the head of the latter and also in ours. Through this temporal context, however, we will find the standard questions specific to adolescence, such as love, friendship, the passage from childhood to adulthood, etc. The relationship maintained by the protagonists means that the story is neither too heavy nor too sad. The cause is credible, although questions about life and death can also lead to unintended consequences. Through these writings from the future, destiny will gradually change. A fiction that we would like to enjoy too!

Disappointing characters

All the interest of the plot rested on the shoulders of our young actors who had to transcribe as closely as possible the character of their model. Yet, alas, they did not manage to touch us and we were disappointed by their performance. Tao Tsuchiya (Naho Takamiya) introduced us to a very different character from the Naho we knew in manga. While this is the joie de vivre and shyness embodied in the original work, we found it bland, not very expressive and not at all concerned with what is happening. Difficult after that to appreciate the film since it is the main heroine…

Kento Yamazaki (Kakeru Naruse) also did not pierce all the subtlety of his counterpart in 2D. While the original character had potential, here it seems insignificant. Already in the anime his role as a depressive was quite complex, the presence and perseverance of Naho did not help to appreciate it. Besides this point, we clearly do not feel any alchemy in this too distant relationship, too bad …

As for Ryo Ryusei (Hiroto Suwa) there too it's the cold shower … The young man had the required physique and charisma, but he failed miserably. Especially because of some important non-existent passages (his love for Naho and his future with her) in this version of the story and the lack of dialogue with Naho. Hirona Yamazaki (Takako Chino) and Kurumi Shimizu (Azusa Murasaka) do not straighten the bar by staying away, while we remember seeing them more present. The only one to have stood out and to have identified his role remains Dori Sakurada (Saku Hagita) who made us laugh while remaining discreet, but not too much unlike the others. A casting mistake that destroyed everything the plot represented original and interesting!

Below the original

Orange's live-action film screwed up in style by collecting bad choices, whereas at the base, the pitch was a beautiful story of friendship between a group of friends. Alas, few positive points will have found favor with our eyes, apart from the fidelity of the scenes taken from the anime (the letter, the sports festival or the accident of Kakeru). The scripted differences are interesting, however, especially in Kakeru's relationship with his mother when he finds a video addressed to him on her mobile phone. A moving moment, while in the anime we just had an SMS, a brilliant idea!

Regarding the letters sent by their future self, we found it a pity that only Naho and Hiroto received them. As a result, the reaction of the other protagonists seemed illogical and too easy. In addition, there are few questions about this event, far from being common though! Again, this misstep costs the film. Overall, if you have seen the original, you will be disappointed but, nothing prevents you from making your opinion. Those who do not know will probably find more interest in viewing it, because ignoring the defects stated above. In short, the feature film will suit more neophytes than fans, who will be able to if they feel like it, get into manga or anime!

Adapting a manga like Orange was, a priori, not a great difficulty and yet… We were disappointed by the lack of credibility of the actors. A live film that is mainly aimed at people who do not know the series and want to discover it!

Trailer de Orange

https://youtu.be/h3QXIv1xvNc