a couple of days ago i sat my bestie down to watch the 20thcb live action movies , and i think now i can finally identify what i disliked the most about them, my “you neglected to adapt this or that part of the story” grievances aside. it’s the way they try to showcase the grim reality of japanese bullying, which makes the end of the third movie look almost like an anti-bullying psa, while neglecting a crucial aspect of the manga in regards to bullying: in the manga, the “good” characters, too, are part of children’s cruel social hierarchy, and they are not at the bottom => they are complicit to it.
none of the “good” ones, none of the kenji group, are the bullies in this hierarchy but they can act like ones. in the manga, donkey has to prove himself by literally saving their asses for them to finally accept him and stop being mean. in the movies, donkey is accepted easily, the snot towel story is simply not adapted. in the manga, keroyon says he never picked on donkey that much only to recount an act of outright bullying, but this joke is not in the movies, of course. in the movies almost everyone easily remembers sadakiyo. it’s almost like none of the “good” kids are part of the society of children, none of them impacted by its rules and hierarchies. (tellingly, precisely the opposite thing, adult yanbou and mabou hypocritically lamenting how cruel school bullying can be, is also omitted from the adaptation).
in the manga, all of this ties naturally into Kenji’s Evil Deed. kenji’s not a bully per se — but through a mindless, childish act he becomes one, he fits into the role of one, he unwittingly directs all the meanness children are capable of towards katsumata. he doesn’t know he did wrong, in the way other bullies in the manga do not know or realise that they did wrong, that they did harm. the end point of his story is for him to finally recognise his wrongdoing and attempt, perhaps childishly, to atone for it. in the movies, Kenji’s Evil Deed comes out of nowhere, no set-up no anything, and then the movies entertain us to a slideshow of katsumata’s suffering, every stereotype of japanese school bullying combined, as if to tell us: bullying is bad.
the thing is, everybody knows bullying is bad. what is often neglected, however, is that there’s an invisible bully inside of each and every one of us that only needs a chance to thrive, that we may not be aware of even as it causes others terrible pain. the movies settle for the first message while completely avoiding the second one. and that’s exactly why they fall flat (aside from them being a rushed adaptation that eventually goes completely off the rails, mixing up characters, themes and events): the statement it attempts to make is completely empty.
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