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Orange is a manga and anime that uses light science fiction to deal with teenage angst, romance, and trauma. The Orange live-action came out in 2015 and brought this extremely emotional story to life. Based on the manga, with an anime that came after this live-action, we watch as a group of high school students use letters from the future to stop a tragedy in their friend group. Thankfully, the story is built on emotion and characters, which makes adapting the story a lot easier than some of the other live-actions we looked at. The Orange live-action is about teenagers living their life, and how they deal with the loss of one of their best friends to suicide. This emotional story doesn’t need grand effects work and costuming and allows it to pack a punch.
In Orange, Naho Takamiya is a timid 16-year-old girl. One day, she receives a letter from her future self detailing actions she must take to prevent Kakeru Naruse, the new transfer student, from sinking into depression and taking his own life. The film is directed by Kôjirô Hashimoto and adapted to the screen by Arisa Kaneko. The Orange Live action stars, Tao Tsuchiya as Naho, Kento Yamazaki as Naruse, Ryô Ryûsei as Hiroto, Hirona Yamazaki as Takako, Dôri Sakurada as Saku, and Kurumi Shimizu as Azusa.
The film was number-one on its opening weekend in Japan with US$2.58 million and it went on to gross ¥3.25 billion ($29.87 million) at the Japanese box office, becoming one of the top ten highest-grossing Japanese films of 2016. Proof that live-action can work extremely well, especially of the shojo variety.
