Based on a popular TV drama that was in turn based on a best-selling comic, Love Strikes! begins one year after the story of the drama concluded. The nerdy, bumbling hero, Fujimoto Yukiyo (Moriyama Mirai), is at a turning point in his life at age 31: He is starting a new job writing for a trendy pop culture website and still looking for a girlfriend after his previous love interests, as detailed in the drama, bid him sayonara.
His cute senior colleague Motoko (Yoko Maki) turns out to be a terror — but Yukiyo finds relief chatting online with a guy who shares his otaku (geeky) interests.
When they finally meet in the flesh, however, the guy turns out to be the leggy, gorgeous Miyuki (Nagasawa Masami), who has been hiding her sex to ward off cyber-world creeps. To Yukiyo’s amazement and delight, Miyuki is not put off by his geeky looks and style; in fact, she likes the whole package.
Yukiyo has just entered into his moteki (the film’s Japanese title), a period when, for whatever mysterious reason, one becomes attractive to the opposite sex.
Miyuki, it turns out, has a boyfriend she can’t quite bring herself to quit. No matter: Yukiyo bonds with her pal Rumiko (Aso Kumiko), a thirtysomething OL (“office lady” or clerk), in the course of a raucous karaoke session. (They share similar tastes in old J Pop tunes) Then when he accompanies his hipster boss (Lily Franky) to a hostess bar he hooks up with the easy-going, easy-on-the-eyes Ai (Naka Riisa). Incredibly, even the sharp-tongued Motoko starts to take a morethan- professional interest in him. But he can’t stop longing for Miyuki, the one who started this whole moteki thing.
Unlike like the many manga adaptations that try to please fans by faithfully reproducing as much of the source material as possible, with cartoony mugging substituting for acting, Love Strikes! is a stand-alone comedy that requires no prior acquaintance with the comic or TV show. Also, despite the fast, even frantic tempo, as seen in a big, goofy musical number beamed in from Broadway, the film takes its characters’ quest for love rather seriously, showing the ache of disappointment as well as the giddiness of delight when a sexual fantasy incredibly comes true.
Finally, in a country where critics like to lavish praise and prizes on dull-but-worthy dramas, while dismissing comedies as unworthy of notice, Love Strikes! beat expectations by showing up on Best Ten lists and being nominated for four Japan Academy Awards, including a Best Actress nomination for Nagasawa Masami. Was it the excellence of her performance that got her the nod — or certain scenes that made steam pour out of millions of male ears?
Mark Schilling