Thoughts on 100 Yen Love

     On Tubi, I watched 100 Yen Love, a 2014 Japanese sports drama directed by Masahara Taku and written by Shin Adachi. The film stars Sakura Ando (Shoplifters, Godzilla Minus One) as Ichiko, a 32-year old woman who lives with her parents above the bento shop the family runs. She is slovenly, with long two-toned hair in her face, barely works at the shop, and stays in her room playing video games in sweats. Her sister Fumiko (Saori Koide) has moved back in with her young son after a divorce, and resents Ichiko for her immaturity and laziness, and their bickering comes to a physical fight, and the mother makes Ichiko move out. She finds a night shift job at a discount store, where she is continually pestered by her talkative co-worker, gives food to a dumpster-diving ex-employee, and on her walks, she passes by a boxing gym, checking out Yuji (Hirofumi Arai), a boxer training for his last bout at 37 years old. She develops a shy crush on him, and they eventually meet, go on an awkward date where they walk around a zoo, and has a sort of relationship where he stays with her, they have sex, but aren't an official couple.

    But through his influence, and then being sexually assaulted by her co-worker, she decides to take up boxing, because she wants to feel power and control in her life, and not to be seen as a loser by everyone. So she trains more, and gains more self-confidence in her focus as an athlete, and pushing her coaches to book her a fight so she can prove herself more. The title of the film comes from a pop song that she uses as her entrance song for her big fight.

    I liked the film, especially Ando's performance, and how her character as Ichiko grows throughout the film from being a bored, lazy person coasting in life to finding motivation through her sport and getting out her rage in focused ways. She's really great in this film, and was excellent in Shoplifters as well.

    I really hated that this film put an unnecessary rape into this film, it felt like an ugly punishment for her character, and did not help the story at all, and the story could have been the same without it, it just really pissed me off.

    I felt for Ichiko that she wanted a connection with Yuji, but his character was a loser, too. Not just that he loses his final fight, but that he was clearly taking advantage of her for sex, being rude and dismissive to her, staying in her place while clearly seeing another woman, and he just came off like a douchebag that she should've just dumped.

    Also, when looking up Hirofumi Arai, I saw that he recently served time in prison for raping a masseuse in 2019, so not only is his character scummy, but so is the actor.

    I thought it was a decent film, mostly anchored by Ando's performance than the rest of the story, and only becomes more of a sports film in the second half of the film.