Robokon ( ロボコン -2003)

AKA: Robot Contest

Starring:
Masami Nagasawa - Satomi Hazawa
Shun Oguri - Koichi Aida
Atsushi Ito - Yotsuya
Takashi Tsukamoto - Kazuyoshi Takeuchi
Kazuma Suzuki - Zushi sensei
Risa Sudo - Sasaki sensei
Tsuyoshi Ujiki - Yoshiyuki Hazawa
Hideko Yoshida - Obaba
YosiYosi Arakawa - Gohara
Sei Hiraizumi - Wakita sensei

This film is based on a real technological competition opened every year in Japan since 1988.

Satomi (NAGASAWA Masami) is a student of a technical college. She is a lazy girl and poor at both study and club activities. One day, a teacher tells her she is short of credits and needs to have extra lessons. More lessons will be killing her, but the teacher gives her a proposal that if she joins the second robot club of the college and takes part in the coming RoboCon with the club, he will accept that as the credit.“Robot Contest” or RoboCon is competed by one hundred and twenty-four teams from sixty-two technical colleges - two teams from each college. Every team consists of one robot and three members of crew - a captain, an operator and a mechanic. The captain of Satomi’s team is the club leader Yotsuya (ITO^ Atsushi), who has dropped out of the first robot club of the college because it is too tightly organized, but is worried about too few members of his club and his small gift of robot operation. The mechanic is Aida (OGURI Shun), who is a lonely genius - having enough gifts in technological fields and no cooperation. And the operator is Satomi, who has never operated a robot before. Their robot is named “BOXhund”, designed with outstanding ideas but still incomplete .

The matches are a single elimination tournament. Two teams compete to make their robot carry more objects to the respective goal within three minutes. The design of the robot is free while it meets some requirements - the weight, the size when it stands still, the power supply, the budget, and so on. The first robot club wins the preliminary matches and proceeds to the final stage like every year; the second robot club loses the first round like every year. But it is not usual that the second robot club is invited to the final stage as one of two teams by recommendation of the judges. They have praised the design concept of “BOXhund”.

Satomi encourages the other members to win the final stage. Her team’s miserable defeat in the first round has awoke her long-sleeping competitive spirit. But they have a lot of problems to face - the incomplete robot, Satomi’s poor operation technique, little cooperation between the members, and having only a few months until the final stage.

It is touching that the club members try to make their way to the final top. ~~crunchy

I downloaded this movie ages ago and completely forgot about it until last night when I was on the hunt for a particular movie. You know somedays you want a thriller, some days a comedy, and some days a romance.

I happened upon Robokon and got that jolt of "deja vu" then it was like "oh yeah!" I have this movie on my hard drive. Duh!

So this morning, I opened it up and away I went.

This movie wasn't the greatest of my Shun-kun movies. Adorable as ever and with his best bud Takashi even sweeter!

The movie, to me, starts out a little abrupt and messy. There wasn't a clear line of communitcation from to the movie to me. I kept going...:"huh?" It wasn't till the middle of the movie that it started to make sense. Or maybe the subs weren't clear enough for me. Not sure. I need to learn Japanese quick!

This was a great time killer. I'll probably end up burning this on DVD but it's not going to be seen anytime soon again. I'd probably watch this out of boredom.

Oguri Shun and Tsukamoto Takashi