One of my favourite mangas and animes ever was turned into a live action movie, starring some of my favourite actors! Needless to say I was ecstatic when I found out 1½ years ago. And ever since then, yes for one and a half years, I've been ecstatically waiting for the dvd-release.
And it's finally come!
And I've finally seen it! :D:D:D:D:D:D
And it was awesome!!!
And I love it!!
To most people this will not say much though so I will try to explain why. The first reason is simply because I love BECK. The story and the characters are undisputedly awesome and the live action does not let them down. All the actors have been chosen carefully and not only do they look like the manga characters, they act the same way, but somehow without making them manga in their manner and thereby making them seem more like manga characters than real people.
The crazy ones, like Chiba and Ryuusuke, are just as crazy, (and post-it man as Chiba is pure win) but in a manner more suited for live characters. Koyuki is as awkward as ever but not as exaggerated as it sometimes is in the manga. Saku and Tairas characters don't take a lot of room but they do an awesome support and live up to my image of them.
All the other supportive characters like Maho and Saitou (the actor here really looks like the manga character, too bad his story is cut out) are really good as well. I give them a special bonus for having foreigners playing all the parts of foreigners, and the man playing Sykes is awesome!! O__O Just his appearance is reason enough to love him. :D
How can you not love this!
A lot of money has gone into the production of this film, and you can tell. It's really well-made and keeps up a high quality throughout. Just the fact that all of the people that are supposed to speak English actually do and speak it perfectly adds a lot to the value, at least for a foreign fan like me. :)
Also the props. Lucille (the guitar) is made to look exactly like in the manga.
There is a lot of English in the movie, and it's good enough for me to wonder if they dubbed the Japanese actors. XDD Which is a good thing. And Ryuusuke and Maho actually speak English with each other and not the fake kind they use in Nodame which is "we're really speaking another language but we thought you'd be sick of not understanding so we make it Japanese, you can just pretend it's some other language"
The music! I've always loved the BECK music and the movie is no exception, I want the soundtrack! The songs are awesome BUT (and this is a big but and the only downside to the movie in my opinion) you never get to hear Koyuki sing... To keep up the illusion of his awesome voice they've muted all his singing and just play the background music and show peoples reactions... I know that this is the best way of keeping the illusion of a perfect voice real, cause no matter which voice they'd used it would never live up the the expectations but I'd be willing to give up the illusion to get the vocals of the songs... At one point you get the lyrics in English on the screen, the background music and Koyuki lip-syncing the words. It's kind of frustrating, I want to hear the song! But this was the only part of the movie I didn't like.
It is well-made, the English is good, the story isn't rushed (it's 2½ hours long so it shouldn't be) and I enjoyed every moment of watching it. I admit I'm totally biased, considering I loved it before I saw it but it didn't let me down even though I had high expectations which speaks in it's favour. I really recommend watching it and even though there are no subtitles yet anyone of medium Japanese skills will be able to follow without any problems. I'm not that good and I never feel lost and, as I've said, there is quite a lot of English which helps.
All in all; I will love this movie forever! :D (and I don't care if anyone disagrees!)
