Tokimeki Memorial (1997) User Reviews

Gentle Coming of Age story

[donaldsgordon · 10/10 · 30 January 2022]

Akihiko is a quiet high school boy in love with the idea of being in love. His friend lures him into the girl's locker room, where he gets trapped when four beauties, Komugi, Mishio, Namie and Natsumi come back from gym class. He overhears their plan to work at a beach-side yakisoba stand, and then applies for a job there himself. Neither the girls nor the brusque Kosuke take kindly to Akihiko stepping into their lives, but forced to work together they slowly get to know each other, and become friends.

Yoshikazu Okada is the screenwriter here, and he'd just started in on Beach Boys, and this touches on some of the same themes: strangers becoming friends and the appeal of life near the sea. The actor, Yoshinori Okada does an excellent job portraying our browbeaten hero, so eager to be liked. Yoshihiko Hakamada also brings just the right degree of snark to his role as the manager of the cafe. Sayaka Yamaguchi probably was the strongest of the actresses, all quite young, but later Akiko Yada and Asami Mizukawa(the friend of the boy who almost drowns) would go on to become stars in their own right.

Disappointing spin-off from cult Japanese computer game

[mb4084 · 5/10 · 8 August 2001]

It's perhaps not fair for a 'gaijin' like me to comment unfavourably on this film. 'Tokimeki Memorial' was intended for Japanese audiences and its real test should be its popularity with them. But since the film, at least in name, is a spin-off from a cult role-playing computer simulation game that did enjoy some popularity outside Japan, I'll use that as my justification.

'Tokimeki Memorial' in its original game concept required the player to assume the identity of a Japanese student who sets out to win the affections of his teenage sweetheart during their time together at Kirameki High School. The word 'Tokimeki' means 'throbbing'and this is a reference to the beatings of the young lovers hearts as their budding romance blossoms. The game first appeared in Japan in the mid-1990s and soon came to assume cult status, with CDs, websites , books and other material devoted to it. So by 1997, when the film was made, the time was ripe to cash in on this fame and attention and at the same time provide a showcase for up and coming young Japanese actors and actresses.

So far so good, and had the screenplay kept more closely to the high-school setting of the game a reasonably good film would probably have resulted. In fact, except for about the first and last 5 minutes of the film, the story is set in a remote seaside resort where our teenage high school crew help to run a fast food restaurant near the beach. The chief female character in the game, 'Shiori Fujisaki',is relegated to the status of a walk-on part in the film, while young actresses like Kanako Enomoto and Sayaka Yamaguchi are given hardly anything to say or do to justify their appearing in the film . Both of them can act if they're given half a chance, especially Kanako. And to see what the pair of them can do together, just watch the TV series 'Kawaii Dake Ja Dame Kashira'.

The young cast are all easy on the eye and enthusiastic in what they do, but I don't think anyone's reputation will have been enhanced by this film. It's not their fault, the basic problem is that once the high school setting was dropped there was no real plot or story to hang the film around. What action there is is insufficient to sustain a film with 7 characters of equal weight, even if it is only about 90 minutes long. There just isn't enough story to go round that number of people given the setting that was chosen. Left in the high schooI, things might have been quite different. 'Dead Poets Society' was set in a high school, it had a similar number of characters of similar age, and it turned out pretty well I think, Robin Williams alone would not have made 'Dead Poets' the success that it was, the real difference was the strong storyline. But 'Tokimeki Memorial' had neither a Robin Williams nor a strong story ,so the comparison is perhaps too harsh.

'Judgement reserved' seems the most fitting way to sum up my impression of this film.