A-Z Movie Challenge: Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou

Well folks, I said I would have the movie review up and here it is! For those unsure, please start here, with the drama review before digging into this. It is needed. Sort of. I’ll be blunt here, this is a series for those nostalgic for the mid 2010’s or those with a specific interest in pre-debut SixTONES or Snow Man, along with 2012 AKB48. Otherwise, this movie isn’t for you.

Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou the movie really wanted to be better then it was. However, when my notes on the film consist more of piecing together the plot verses any real commentary about acting, pacing, etc it’s not looking good. I will do my best to give this film a fair shake.

So our movie sequel takes place relatively close to where the drama ended. However, we’re not out of the woods yet! Bakaleya is now being temporarily combined with the main Catteleya school. The rules are trickier to follow, and the groups are fractured at this point. With the main school’s leader Yuka v. Fumie, and Bakada v. Kiku Koukou, the shenanigans never end at Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou!

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That’s being generous since this movie is piecemeal at best. This is mostly due to the film being built around Sakuragi Ren, you know Tetsuya’s older brother whose constantly referenced but wasn’t really elaborated on in the drama. Because viewers were so invested in his character of course (sarcasm).

However the writing for the actual characters we cared about was bad too. There was enough cohesion to make an entertaining film, but there’s no room for a single logical thought. Team 4 of AKB48, and Snow Man are antagonists only in the most loose sense of the word. They are introduced, ‘fought’ with, and dismissed. They add nothing to the ‘plot’. There’s no real stakes in this film.

I feel bad for the AKB girls the most. The writer had no idea how to make a decent antagonist for them or from them. Their conflict was literally a fanservice cosplay contest at the school festival and once that was over they were all besties again. Fumie was screwed over the most since the writer just more or less wrote her out of the story with her plot. It was a mess. The boys made no progress as characters with all their fighting and conflicts pretty much making a drama circle back to their start.

How they chose to do this technique wise was ill-advised too. There were so many disjointed jump cuts with little to no transition between them. There’s no natural overlap in the girls and guys conflicts so I don’t know how they could have smoothed it out. The flashbacks were either a) not relevant to the conflict at hand or b) did not make sense since half or more characters weren’t there for the events they flashed back to. It didn’t help that all the flashbacks felt more like time padding then actual content as well.

~Baby Snow Man ~

The fight choreography was iffy. The one on one, two on two choreography was fun to watch. Kaito (Iwamoto Hikaru) and Tetsuya (Morimoto Shintaro) fighting was so cool! The fight before that was absolutely stupid looking. If there’s only Tetsuya and Tatsuya fighting, and like 20+ bad guys – why were more then half of the bad guys running around? It would have made more sense for them just wait and jump in when a friend of theirs was beaten. However, logic was never Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou‘s strong point anyway and this isn’t so different from what happened in the drama.

I don’t want to completely tear this movie to shreds since it is in fact, still entertaining at the end of the day. The acting between all cast members, old and new was on par with the original drama. The characters remain stable throughout, no one regresses but no one really progresses either. The direction, locations and cinematography remain on par with the drama original which is a bit disappointing but not the worst.

The only highlight, and this is a personal one was the inclusion of Iwamoto Hikaru as Mashima Kaito. Kaito’s motivations were shoe-horned and his characterization paper thin, but his fight chreography looked great. There’s no deeper thoughts, I just like Iwamoto Hikaru so I liked seeing him on screen as Kaito.

I’ve seen a fair amount of movie sequels to dramas, but Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou‘s is probably one of the worst. It’s the purest form of popcorn entertainment, and on par with what the drama offered. Otherwise, not something I’d recommend to many.

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