Orenji

The story is kind of lame. The girl gets a letter from her future self with a list of things she regrets and she tries to do them differently. There is a lot you could do with that premise, but there could have been a little bit more creativity here. At its core it's a typical school romance, nothing you haven't seen before. Except for the main guy, the characters are a little bit uninteresting too because they lack depth and I didn't feel that much of a chemistry between him and the girl. The whole thing gets a little better in the second half though.

It's not bad and it does have its nice moments, but ultimately I would just call it "okay".

Although the script was good and the values of the story were awesome ( friendship, loyalty, love, family) the story was very slow and had many gaps. You will only enjoy this if you don't try to make sense of it, because it doesn't make sense, it's too fantastic and unrealistic.

This movie is very well directed, although the script lacks clarity in some areas. The actors did their job very well.

It shows the importance of having good and honest friends.

Overall, It is a beautiful, heartwarming movie.

I haven't read the manga, but tried to watch the anime, and I just couldn't. This neverending drama gave me an overdose of exagerated sentimentalism, and most characters were annoying as hell, especially Naho. The only thing I liked about the anime was the opening.

Fortunately, and this is rare enough to underline it, the live-action movie shines where the anime failed. What first strikes is the music. Despite the redundancy of the main theme and its variation during the whole movie, I thought that the soundtrack was beautiful and almost moved me to tears.

Secondly, I was highly surprised by the acting. I'm just blaming the writers who wanted to stick to the manga/anime characters a bit too much, which turns some emotional moments to almost auto-parody. But let's say that it just brings a smile in the middle of tears, for a final heartwarming sensation.

Some reviewers blame the scenes from the anime/manga that were missing in the movie. Well, the movie is 140min - long already, and I think it gets the true essence of the story. Actually, I think it's even better not to make it last too long, as the anime quickly got from "cute" to "unbearable" because of unnecessary lenghts. Plus, this is a teen drama, some concessions need to be done.

Visually, "Orange" impresses sometimes. Maybe too saturated at the end, with visible special effects, but overall they did a great job.

I remember reading the manga and found the story quite touching and beautiful.

I think the movie suffers from the editing and pacing to the point that I don't want to recommend it at all. I remember actually pausing several times to see how much time was remaining until the end because I couldn't believe how it was dragging on. There's several moments where you feel a sense of relief "...Ah, everything will get better now!" and then a twist! things are just as bad as before, or worse! The manga was able to handle these better, but in a single movie, maybe have that happen once, not two, three times!

I also felt almost every actor was too wooden in their performances. Obviously the tone of the movie is very very serious, but having most scenes and characters conversing slowly, and seriously without emotion, usually just standing there (there's almost zero action) made it even harder to get into the story.

Due to these reasons, I found myself no longer caring for the characters to find a resolution, and to just hurry up and get to the ending already. I think sometimes, movies shouldn't try to cram in every plot point from the original source material. Condensing the story would have been more fluid and more impactful. This movie absolutely did not need to be almost 2 and a half hours long!