I was on my way to a screening of Tsutomu Hanabusa's teen romcom "Koko Debut (High School Debut)" when the March 11 earthquake struck. Luckily, the Oedo subway train I was riding made it, slowly, to the next station and, instead of catching this adaptation of a hit girls' comic by Kazune Kawahara, I ended up walking three hours home in the dark.
So when I finally saw the film on a DVD (press screenings were then being canceled right and left), I wanted it to justify the hike, if not the queasy feeling of impending doom in that rocking subway car. This had better be good.
When I found myself thoroughly enjoying this feather-light film, with everyone on screen behaving like manga characters, I first thought the disaster, and consequent stress, had softened my brain, somewhat the way Robert De Niro's panic-attack-prone gang boss got weepy over TV commercials in "Analyze This."