tokyo shounen 東京少年 [movie]

That old story of boy [never] meets girl, falls in love, then they realise they are the same person. 

Is there something wrong with me? I totally crush on Horikita Maki when she is a boy. I like her best when she is playing a girl being a boy. It actually rocks my world. This film isn’t actually that great at all. It is kinda non eventful and doesn’t really have much going on but for some reason as soon as she dons the *ore* *daro* sh*t and swears like a trouper I go a bit funny. I love her boy voice, she walks differently and moves like – not like a boy – but like her own entity. I think she may have made up a new gender and I think it happens to be my persuasion.

This will be a mini review because I didn’t really notice much of the movie bar that. So I will spare you the ranting of my affections for androgyny and the like. Wait till I’ve finished IS Intersexual – god that is giving me enough gender confused issues to be going on with. Full up on that right now. (^_^)

This movie is a world away from her previous *accidental boy* role and potentially type casting character from Hana Kimi. Horikita Maki plays a girl with a split personality – one of which is a boy. In love with the other side. Of herself. The girl bit. They haven’t ever met. But they write to each other.

It is a little weird to describe it but why didn’t I find it weird watching it? I don’t know whether Horikita Maki is just a brilliant actor that always gets it right on the nose with hidden depth etc, or whether she has something in her own personal character that brings something necessary to these roles that would fall flat without her.

I feel like I could forgive her a millions sins if she played it with that in mind. She wound me up in Kurosagi as she was meant to do, she was phenomenal in about 50 different ways in Hana Kimi, and if I ever see her work with Tegoshi Yuya again as in Teenage Amnesiac I will jump for joy and most likely hit my head on the ceiling.

I like the movie in general as it has an unusual timeline order and pace, but that does cause problems for me as well. Due to seeing the story from many different perspectives we have to watch a lot of scenes twice. It really bugs me when I have just seen something and have to sit through another 10 minutes of it a little while later.




It wasn’t a huge bug bare but it made the film seem a lot longer than it was. I like seeing what happened earlier from a different side but I don’t like to see lots of footage I’ve already seen. Just the different bits please or I will get distracted and faze out.

There were some great moments in the film but it is all for the weird psychotic shenanigans of her male side. Like kissing herself in the mirror, that scene is almost indescribably perfect as it is more like psychosis than most movies would show. Usually there are an abundance of epic savage frantic actions with a huge musical score, but this movie is shot with the same disorientated, disjointed, sometimes normal sometimes confused – and often a blurry line between the two – type feel, and if you have ever even had sleep deprivation you will know that the world doesn’t make sense when you have any kind of psychosis but it isn’t always constantly pounding at your head.

This film does feel like that hazy, flickering, inconstant feeling that accompanies mental disorientation. It is more subtle than most films I have seen about this sort of subject. And I did like that.

But still, it wasn’t the most accurate (in terms of psychology) or intriguing movie on first viewing and I feel it was carried solely on the presence of Horikita Maki. Luckily she does have enough of that presence to make me happy to watch her in anything. And I may well even watch this again. Though I think for my own safety I think I should not really be allowed to watch her playing a girl playing a boy – It messes with my head too much.

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