Maki Horikita: Korede Iinoda!! Eiga Akatsuka Fujio movie review

Year: 2011

Length: 110 minutes

Director: Hideaki Sato

Main Cast:

Maki Horikita as Hatsumi Takeda

Tadanobu Asano as Fujio Akatsuka

Koichi Sato as Katsuichi Sasaki

Tsuyoshi Abe as Joji Hirose

Hirofumi Arai as Minoru Mori

Makoto Awane as Tetsuo Yamaguchi

Tae Kimura as Toshiko Akatsuka

 Doing quite a bit of Maki watching lately, the Miss Pilot drama and now this film is the 3rd one of her's I've seen in the last 10 days. This movie is based on the life of manga artist Fujio Akatsuka but it really only covers the years from 1967-69, to be honest not much of a plot nor storyline but did find it to be an enjoyable watch.

 Maki plays the character Hatsumi who has just been hired as an editor by the Shonen manga company, she wants to publish female mangas but instead is assigned to oversee the work of Fujio. He and his assistants are quite a wacky bunch, they do all sorts of silly and inane things from dressing off the wall, having strange parties, really most oddball things you can think of. Hatsumi is the complete opposite, very refined and she's never had a drink in her life until one night when she goes out with the crew at a sort of Hawaiian party. After the party she gets a bit hooked on living it up, from never having a drink in her life to be able to put the drinks down with the best of them. At first Fujio accepted her rather well as the new editor for his manga but it did take a lot longer for his assistants to come around but they eventually did, especially after that first night that Hatsumi finally had a drink.

 Throughout the next two years from 1967-69 we follow the life of Fujio, he has a hit manga but eventually it gets overtaken by a rival book which makes him need to create a new one which he does, that also starts out successfully. Also during this stretch of time all of the other workers at his office start to slowly leave, most have moved up in the world either by starting to write their own mangas or have just gotten better jobs. Hatsumi though sticks it out with him, they make for a really good pair and team, know this was based on the life of Fujio but seeing as how the movie only went up to 1969 don't know whether the two of them ever got together, such as a marriage, the 2 of them really get along so well. During this 2 year stretch though most things work out well for Fujio not all do, his mother ended up passing away,  he was once close to but in his later years drifted apart from her but when she died he was broken up for a long time. Also the second hit manga he created also started to fail so that ended up being cancelled near the end of the film, now it's time for him to create yet another one, he did but we don't know what it was but seeing as how he had a long career there's no doubt he created many more mangas through the years.

 Also not sure what exactly becomes of Hatsumi, she did want to publish female mangas and by the ned of the film it appears as that's her next step and she has the backing and support of Fujio to do it. Film really ends about then, said above there wasn't really much of a plot, scenes and events just happened which makes it seem like a film that may have been unfocused but this one wasn't. Actually it may have helped having a thin storyline, it did work and not sure why but guess you don't always need to follow the same formula in a movie. Have watched 3 Maki movies recently, first two were just so-so but this was a really enjoyable watch, really crazy and off the wall, if you don't go in with high expectations think you'll be rewarded, it was just a fun film where you luckily don't have to think much. Whole cast was topnotch too, Asano is always solid but Maki really did well, she plays too many serious roles but this was a finally a change from those kind, she actually can pull off a comedy role well and would like to see her do more of them in the future.
 Once again a brief recap but this film doesn't need a long one, it's just a fin and entertaining film which really never drags, would recommend it and will give it a fairly good grade of a 8.5/10. Though the review was a bit short did take a mega amount of screenshots form the film then to help you follow it better but like I said there wasn't too much of a plot in the film, check out the next 2 posts for the screenshots, of course Maki has the most of them but have many from all the characters in the film.