If you’ve listened to this podcast then you know that our hosts LaNeysha and Kate are in love with mangaka FUJITA’s Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, a manga published in English by Kodansha Comics USA and an anime currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Now, the wholesome geeky romance is a live-action film. While the film released in Japan earlier this year, it hadn’t made it stateside yet which made the Fantasia Fest 2020 International Premiere even more special!
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Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku’s live-action film’s focus is on the ways geeks being able to get together by accepting each other’s hobbies and letting them be who they are gets lost in live-action translation. Directed by Yuichi Fukuda, fans of the existing material get to watch Nifuji Hirotaka (Kento Yamazaki) and Narumi Momose’s (Mitsuki Takahata) romance again, while new audiences get the chance to experience them for the first time. And it all has a musical twist and new original moments.
If you’re unfamiliar with the plot, here it is. Narumi is starting a new job and doing everything she can to hide the fact she is an otaku, after dealing with a break-up because of it. But one of her new colleagues, Nifuji, is a childhood friend who knows all about her passion for yaoi (called BL by fans), and other anime and manga. The nearly two-hour film focuses on Narumi and Nifuji’s romance, their first dates, and the constant miscommunication between them.
Hit play on the audio above to get the full review of Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku and to read Kate’s review, head here.
Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku is currently screening at the virtual Fantasia Fest 2020, based out of Montreal.
