Making its North American premiere tonight at the Japan Cuts festival is Masaharu Take’s comedic sports drama, 100 Yen Love. 32 year-old Ichiko (Sakura Ando) spends her days living in her mother’s apartment while playing video games with her nephew, eating junk food, reading manga and sleeping. After a nasty fight with her sister, who is going through a divorce, ensues, Ichiko’s mother pushes her out into the real world to live on her own. Shortly after, she lands a night shift job at a convenience store which only sells items for 100 yen. As she commutes to and from work, she passes a boxing gym and begins to fancy an aging amateur boxer (Hirofumi Arai) who seems almost as pathetic, lonely and depressed as her. The film progresses from there but when he decides not to box anymore and she starts to get frustrated in life, she picks up the gloves herself and starts making some big changes.
When I started screening 100 Yen Love I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but 30 minutes in, all I knew was that Ichiko may have been the most boring character in cinematic history. Once she met the boxer I expected something to shift but really all that changed was that she had an interest in something human and her face no longer always had a frown, she was curious. I would call it a crush but it seemed a bit more than that. Regardless, he is a miserable person who only likes people that don’t try, so the more effort she puts in to keeping him around, the more distance he tries to create between them. As you can imagine, this was incredibly frustrating. SPOILER Then, throw in a random rape scene which, oddly enough, didn’t really scar her, but instead it motivated her to take up boxing, which is where the film gets good. END SPOILER
The first hour of 100 Yen Love is nothing to be desired. It’s a film about two rather pathetic people attempting to get together only for one to try a little harder than the other, eventually causing a rift between them. That being said, the film really starts to get going from that point on and the final 40 minutes or so were highly entertaining. It made me realize that 100 Yen Love was a sports movie disguised as an adult “coming-of-age” drama, but the sports aspect doesn’t come into play until so late in the film that the surprise is welcomed with open arms. Despite some unfortunate incidents, you start to really pull for Ichiko as she attempts to become a driven individual with an actual goal, something she hasn’t had or been for years.
While the final 40 minutes mentioned above may be a sports montage more than anything, I found the film really became a lot more interesting because it touched on different themes and areas. There was a lot more humor, it took a brief and interesting look at sexism in sports, it’s female boxing in a movie (the only other one I know is Million Dollar Baby), and it was an opportunity to watch Ichiko grow and mature into an actual adult, something she was far from being in the beginning of the film. The one thing the film never specifies, but I think it does a good job showing, is how much time goes by. Normally in films it seems like these changes happen overnight, but you can see Ichiko losing weight which, as everyone knows, definitely takes time, so between the lost attempt at love and the intense desire to win and be good at something, we end up finding ourselves wrapped up in her inspiring transformation.
While I can see some people being disgruntled with the actual ending of the film, the final three minutes or so, I actually found it to be quite fitting. It’s an ending that matched the personality of Ichiko’s character and an ending that made me wonder what she would do next and how she would continue with her life.
Overall, Masaharu Take’s film is one that I would definitely recommend. While a good chunk of 100 Yen Love may seem annoying and potentially boring, if you hang in there you’ll find there is a really entertaining and thoughtful movie buried underneath the bland, pathetic nature of the first 60% of the film. When the credits begin to roll, you’ll realize this is actually a welcomed twist on the “coming-of-age” genre that utilizes boxing and a failed relationship to not only motivate someone that seemed impossible to motivate, but also turn someone into a functioning adult that really had no troubled past up until she moved out of her home.
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