Recently, I watched KOIZORA… without subtitles! This is the first time I was able to understand everything.

Koizora, originally a handphone novel by an anonymous writer, is the typical high school growing up story of true love found and lost and found again. It follows the life of a teenage girl, MIKA (Aragaki Yui) during her high school years. HIRO (Miura Haruma) is Mika’s first love, and a really sweet platinium-blonde punk who makes you cry a lot at the end.

Here is a random screenshot of their sweetness:

Right, I shan’t give away any more spoilers…

… but I want to plug this movie because Aragaki Yui’s in the main role!

Yui has acted in TV dramas Dragon Zakura (2005) with YamaP, My Boss My Hero (2006) with Tegoshi and most recently Papa to Musume no Nanokakan (2007) with Shige, but just got into movies pretty recently. If you didn’t like her in Papa to Musume, she completely redeems herself in Koizora. The acting is believable, natural as she takes the character from age 15 to 22, showing how the character matures through the years.

What’s more… she’s kicking off her singing career! The insert song in Koizora – heavenly days – is sung by Yui and the first track off her debut album, Sora. It’s also an NTT Do.Co.Mo commercial song.

The album was released on 5th December 2007 – TODAY!

01. heavenly days
02. オレンジ (Orange)
03. 陽のかげる丘 (Hi no Kageru Oka)
04. メモリーズ (Memories)
05. ひかり (Hikari)
06. Sign of the moon ～interlude～
07. スターライト (Starlight)
08. ペアリング (Pairing)
09. 愛を知りたくて (Ai wo Shiritakute)
10. そら (Sora)

In fact, I just finished listening to it and it’s great easy listening stuff.

More on the album and heavenly days PV later… XD