The seishun eiga or ¡°youth film¡± is one Japanese genre that doesn¡¯t travel well abroad. With only a few exceptions, these films assume a familiarity with the insular world of the Japanese high school (or, once in a while, junior high school) that outlanders are unlikely to possess. They also follow certain conventions, such as starry-eyed heroines with unrequited crushes on indifferent or abusive guys, that don¡¯t translate smoothly to London or Los Angeles.
Even so, seishun eiga offer the sort of clear window into Japan¡¯s national culture, society and psyche that other, more internationally popular, genres don¡¯t. Most Japanese survived high school; relatively few joined yakuza gangs.
Among the purest recent examples of the genre is ¡°Yell for the Blue Sky,¡± a drama of teen romance and gaman (perseverance) that plays as though director Takahiro Miki and scriptwriter Yukiko Mochiji decided to go full-bore on formulas, save the one about a central character coming down with a fatal disease. The film is, in fact, an adaptation of Kazune Kawahara¡¯s hit manga, which has sold more than 3.4 million paperback copies since its first appearance in Margaret, a girl¡¯s manga magazine, in 2008.
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