Naratâju (2017)

Naratâju: Directed by Isao Yukisada. With Kasumi Arimura, Yûtarô Furutachi, Mikako Ichikawa, Miki Kamioka. Izumi is a sophomore university student when she hears from her former high school teacher and mentor Takashi. They were both involved in the school drama club. She liked him. He liked her. Takashi asks Izumi to return to the school and assist with a performance. Will the feelings be rekindled?

“Narratage was a slow moving movie with some gut-wrenching parts but overall suffers from pacing and sometimes confusing time jumps. The ending is frustrating to anyone who wanted a real conclusion and I found myself wondering why I went to this movie at all because of that. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eMatsuJun plays a wishy washy teacher who has issues that arenu0026#39;t completely addressed and in fact you want to want to punch him for his inaction and passiveness. But then again the main character, Izumi, is just as wishy washy as her Sensei. Overall, itu0026#39;s an interesting premise, a somewhat ambiguous conclusion but the characters themselves were lacking in some fundamental way that would make me sympathize with any of them. Instead I found myself sighing at their antics. Or maybe Iu0026#39;m just desensitized to love stories like this. I believe they were going for a slice of life, painful first love sort of thing, but I just rolled my eyes most of the time. But I guess if thatu0026#39;s your thing, donu0026#39;t let me stop you from watching this. It has all the cliché love parts that would probably have a more romantically inclined personu0026#39;s heart beating but did nothing to melt the ice cold that mine is made of.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAs a side note for those just watching for MatsuJun, he isnu0026#39;t in this as much as I was lead to believe, from the trailers and instead this is being lead mostly by Kasumi and Kentaro.”