Saikano live-action quick-review

[Tenshi no Ai]

Well, just watched it last night and the reason I'm sticking it in this forum, is because I'm going to be doing a short compare/contrast with the anime^^

In my opinion, the movie was MUCH better than the series. I'll go through some major points that I thought made it better, and a couple things that was missing...

-First off, although I liked the actress that played Chise, I don't think she totally captured her young-innocence. Well, already in the anime she looks like she's only about 13 instead of someone in high school, which made it harder for some scenes in the anime... (which brings me to my next point). I kinda miss the parts in the anime though, where Chise came to school with bandaids, and had to drink juice with her meds. I guess because it made it seem like she actually had a problem? :/

-I found the anime had some pretty graphic scenes in it and although reviews were all like "it's the saddest show ever!!" I just couldn't symphasize with the characters, one part especially being [spoiler] Chise and Testu together :/ [/spoiler] Yeah, some pretty wrong stuff :/ On the movie though, they had a couple of baddish scenes, but not NEARLY as bad, nor was there any nudity involved whatsoever. So the movie is pretty clean. I'd probably give it a PG-14, moreso for the violence than baddish parts, but the anime was definately R from what I remember :/

-The show and movie had a different mix of characters. Some were more of a main character than others, but was different. Same with big events in the show were pretty different than the anime, but close/good enough.

-The ending in the movie... I prefered SO much better. Spoiler time^^ For the anime: [spoiler] I HATED how it ended! I mean, it also made the show less sad for me :/ I mean, how Chise destroyed the world and made it into nothingness where only Shuuji existed, and her beign a shining light that would be with him forever was just blah for my tastes :/ Guess it was only of those "eternal love" stories or something, but I just didn't like it :/ [/spoiler]

As for the movie though:

[spoiler] I liked the whole thing on ho it was either Chise being destroyed by the Japanese military, or have the world destory her. So after spending her final hours with Shuuji and just the whole thing with her transforming into the huge thing with wings and then bombing her in space and all the flashbacks and stuff it was so sad^^ And then with Shuuji finding her (well, one of her wings) in a desert as he kept searching for her, just totally made the final touch^^ So yeah I really loved that ending^^ [/spoiler]

And that's about all I've got^^ Overall a good movie, but being drama-oriented, it's a full 2 hours. One of those "enjoyable to watch at least once" movies though^^

[Joshua Christopher]

Sounds pretty interesting. I disliked the anime a lot because it never seemed to have any real vision. There was no message other than "Look at how much their lives suck!" I found Now and Then, Here and There to be much better at showing real suffering, and it all had a meaning.