Our Secret Diary (2023) - Japanese Movie Review
-May contain major spoilers-
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Summary
Kuroda Nozomi (Sakurada Hiyori) is in her 2nd year of high school and she is a member of the broadcasting club.
One day after changing classrooms, she finds in her desk a love letter dedicated to the person that sits in that seat. The letter said "I like you" and was signed by Setoyama Jun (Takahashi Fumiya), the most popular guy in high school. She writes a reply thanking him and telling him she's sorry, but she doesn't know him enough and leaves it in his shoe locker.
When Nozomi changes classrooms again she receives a reply where Setoyama tells her that if she doesn't know much about him but wants to know him they should go out (smooth!). Nozomi writes to Setoyama telling him to put his replies in the broadcasting club's request box and they begin to exchange letters regularly as friends.
One day Setoyama leaves in the request box a notebook that says that when they fill it up completely he will confess his feelings, but in person, and the notebook is dedicated to Matsumoto... wait, what?
Matsumoto Erino (Kayashima Mizuki) is the student council president and also Nozomi's best friend.
After not writing to him for a while, Nozomi decides to tell him that she is not Matsumoto Erino and return the notebook, but when she is on her way to do it she bumps into Setoyama.
Setoyama asks her if Matsumoto said anything about him and if she knows about a notebook, leading Nozomi to say that he will get a reply soon.
Nozomi and Setoyama begin to exchange the notebook but this time Nozomi pretends to be her friend Matsumoto Erino...
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Thoughts
Our Secret Diary is a great high school movie and it subverted all my expectations.
The cinematography is really good and feels really youthful (?) Although the first 10-15 minutes feel a little odd, it is still entertaining.
The acting is good, but Sakurada Hiyori at the start feels a little bit over the top, but towards the end, it gets a lot better.
The soundtrack surprised me quite a lot, I mean, It's not often that you hear a rock (or heavy metal) band in a Japanese high school movie, and towards the end of the movie I also ended up liking "The Hormone".
I have to confess something... Lately, I find Japanese movies based on high school to be rather "cringe" which I used to love watching (my favorite being the adaptation of Kimi ni Todoke), but I waved it off as an age-related thing. When I started watching this movie I thought it was going to happen the same with all those other movies (stopping halfway through the movie), but I ended up loving it a lot.
I recommend this movie if you like watching lovely high school movies.
By the way, this movie has a really good post-credits scene, so if you're going to watch it, watch it fully :).
Rating
Acting - 7/10
Plot - 10/10
Romance - 10/10
Soundtrack - 8/10
Cinematography - 9/10
Overall Rating - 8.5/10
Extended Movie Info
Run Time: 110 minutes (1hs 50min).
Release Date: July 7, 2023.
Based on: Kokan Uso Nikki (translation: Diary of Exchanged Lies [I think is called that]) by Sakura Iiyo.
Directed by: Takemura Kentaro.
Screenplay by: Yoshikawa Nami.
Starring: Sakurada Hiyori and Takahashi Fumiya.
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