Soup : Umarekawari no Monogatari

Namase Katsuhisa aka Yabe Kenzo's wife has left him and his daughter doesn't like him.

He sucks at his job and Konishi Manami basically takes over his role and becomes his boss and he finds out no one at work likes him.

 Its his daughter's birthday and Yabe Kenzo goes to buy her flowers.

However, Yabe Kenzo's daughter doesn't want to spend time with him on her birthday and instead spends it with her friend shoplifting.

Daughter's friend says don't blame her cause I'm the one of invited her.

Yabe Kenzo lectures daughter. She says why are you trying to be cool only at this time after letting mom run away and Yabe Kenzo slaps his daughter.

Yabe Kenzo has to go on a business trip with Konishi Manami the next day and tells her about slapping his daughter. Konishi Manami is like don't look at me, I don't want to talk to you and requests to change her seat on the airplane. Lol.

Konishi Manami is pissed at Yabe Kenzo the whole trip and suddenly they both get struck by lightning.

And find themselves in another world while waiting to be reincarnated.

They have fun in the afterlife and meet some interesting characters.

This looks like heaven to me.

Why the hell would anyone want to get reincarnated when one can have so much fun? The soup in the title refers to the soup that they have to drink to get reincarnated.

However, who ever drinks the soup will lose their memory and Yabe Kenzo wants to see his daughter again.

Along their way, they meet Ohgo Suzuka who I haven't seen in yonks. Look how much she's grown since Sexy Voice and Robo. Sniff.

Let's not forget Furuta Arata. This movie has all my favourite people in it.

One can never have too many Konishi Manami screencaps.

Yabe Kenzo gets reincarnated and he gets to hang out with Hirose Alice and....

.. Hishimoto Ai. Lucky bastard.

And he finds out his daughter grows up to be Ito Ayumi! I could not have casted this movie any better!

Soup is basically a slow, subdued movie with a love story and a father daughter story wrapped in a story about reincarnation. The problem is the love story feels uncooked and needed a lot more seasoning. The afterlife stuff could have been a lot more interesting.

The father daughter bit is standard but what I enjoyed was the cast and their performances.

Soup could have been a great movie with more polish to the script but I kind of enjoyed it, probably more than I should have. Not bad but not memorable. Worth watching if you like the cast.