Robokon (2003)

Robokon: Directed by Tomoyuki Furumaya. With Masami Nagasawa, Shun Oguri, Atsushi Itô, Takashi Tsukamoto. Satomi is not putting much effort into her school work. She is told by her instructor that she is short of the minimum number of credits to advance. One option is for her to participate in the Robot Club, which is participating in a robot contest that is a single-elimination challenge. Satomi and the club begin working to rise to the top.

“This film is based on a real technological competition opened every year in Japan since 1988.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSatomi (NAGASAWA Masami) is a student of a technical college. She is a lazy girl and poor at both study and club activities. One day, a teacher tells her she is short of credits and needs to have extra lessons. More lessons will be killing her, but the teacher gives her a proposal that if she joins the second robot club of the college and takes part in the coming RoboCon with the club, he will accept that as the credit.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eu0026quot;Robot Contestu0026quot; or RoboCon is competed by one hundred and twenty-four teams from sixty-two technical colleges – two teams from each college. Every team consists of one robot and three members of crew – a captain, an operator and a mechanic. The captain of Satomiu0026#39;s team is the club leader Yotsuya (ITO^ Atsushi), who has dropped out of the first robot club of the college because it is too tightly organized, but is worried about too few members of his club and his small gift of robot operation. The mechanic is Aida (OGURI Shun), who is a lonely genius – having enough gifts in technological fields and no cooperation. And the operator is Satomi, who has never operated a robot before. Their robot is named u0026quot;BOXhundu0026quot;, designed with outstanding ideas but still incomplete .u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe matches are a single elimination tournament. Two teams compete to make their robot carry more objects to the respective goal within three minutes. The design of the robot is free while it meets some requirements – the weight, the size when it stands still, the power supply, the budget, and so on. The first robot club wins the preliminary matches and proceeds to the final stage like every year; the second robot club loses the first round like every year. But it is not usual that the second robot club is invited to the final stage as one of two teams by recommendation of the judges. They have praised the design concept of u0026quot;BOXhundu0026quot;.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSatomi encourages the other members to win the final stage. Her teamu0026#39;s miserable defeat in the first round has awoke her long-sleeping competitive spirit. But they have a lot of problems to face – the incomplete robot, Satomiu0026#39;s poor operation technique, little cooperation between the members, and having only a few months until the final stage.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt is touching that the club members try to make their way to the final top.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe match-ups between two robots, this movieu0026#39;s highlight scenes, are realistic and suspenseful. And this film has a lot of good humor. The leading actress, NAGASAWA Masami also stars in the latest top one box-office film, u0026quot;Crying Out for Love at the Center of the World.u0026quot; (9 out of 10)u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eu003culu003eu003cliu003eUSHIRO Satoshiu003c/liu003eu003c/ulu003e”