Shibuya Maruyama Story (AKA Shibuya-ku Maruyama-cho) is a 2007 over two hours long romance J-movie [Yeah, like I can’t believe I just heard about it this week! I FAIL]. The theme of the movie is that Shibuya is like this centre of the world where romance blossoms and also where troubled people go to heal their hearts. It has two separate stories which are only connected by places (Shibuya of course, a restaurant and a Love Motel) but other than both being about romance, they are two separate movies.

The first part is about a schoolgirl who despite having a boyfriend already, falls for the new teacher. As expected, I cut the movie in two and threw this first part into the recycle bin immediately afterwards cleaning up said bin.

Sayonara part 1. So if you want to watch that part, you will have to get the whole movie yourself. It’s only the second part that I am interested in after all.

The second half of the movie stars Riisa Naka (as Yumi), one everyone should know by now as ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’ (She voiced Makoto in the animated movie as well) and was the lead in ‘Yankee-kun to Megane-chan’ J-drama too. It was in the drama that Riisa-chan caught my attention. In this movie, she co-stars with Yumiko Hara (as Ariyoshi). I confess that I know little about Yumiko-san.

Naka Riisa

Hara Yumiko

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