Contemplative Weeb Reviews

Ootaku ni wa koi wa muzukashii

Love is hard for an otaku or simply wotakoi is one of my favourite romcom anime. It's a pretty unique anime because it's not about high school students. Wotakoi follows 2 otaku couples who work at the same office. Their interactions are really entertaining to watch. I noticed that a live action of this movie has come out. In this post, I'll be doing a comparative review of the movie and anime.
  

Characters
I think the characters are the best part about both the movie and the anime. The actors have done a great job at portraying the characters. However, I feel like their interactions haven't been written well. For example, the best part about the anime is probably the friendships the characters have. They truly understand each other and help each other. Even random conversations between them are enjoyable. In the anime, dynamics make a lot sense. The friendships between each one of them fit, whether it's Narumi and Kabakura, or Nifuji and Kabakura etc.  However in the movie, the dynamics in between the character's is very weird. It almost felt like the characters of Kabakura and Koyanagi were unecessary. Now I will add, that the actors did a good job in portraying the characters but they were poorly written
Engagement
The anime is super entertaining. You can watch it for hours on end, all in one day. The pacing of the show is perfect, you won't feel like it's a 'drama', but the story moves along and we see the relationships of the characters develop. The movie however failed to be engaging for me. This movie is a musical. The genre of the songs in the movie vary from j pop to jazz to classical. I feel like they should've stuck with one genre of music, preferably jpop. The movie is set in Tokyo and is about 2 office going otakus. The varied genres of music distracted from the story,not added to it.
Writing
Like I said before, the pacing of the anime is great. The anime manages to be funny and serious when it needs to be and is understandable and probably relatable to otakus. The movie on the other hand, seems to be making a mockery out of otakus a little. There are some scenes in the movie which are straight out of the anime. They're pretty entertaining to watch. The comedic timing in them makes sense. However, all the other scenes are very random. In one scene, Kabakura starts tap dancing and basically asks Momose to dance with her, for no particular reason and a song breaks out.
Uniqueness
In my opinion, wotakoi is unique. It's not about high schoolers for once. The characters are stereotypes, but they're still not that common. The movie too is pretty unique. This was the first Japanese musical movie I've watched, and I do watch a decent amount of Japanese movies and drama.

All in all, if you're looking for a chill rom-com to watch, give the anime a shot. The movie is cool if you're a Kento Yamazaki fan like me but otherwise, I'd say it's skippable.