Minna Esper Dayo! Movie / The Virgin Psychics

 Shometani Shota and Mano Erina are back for more Esper action.

First off, happy belated birthday to Mano Erina!

I hope she does not abandon her Mano friends while pursuing her acting career!

I didn't realise that the movie was actually released on the interwebs a month ago as The Virgin Psychics instead of Minna Esper Dayo!

First off, Kaho who was the best thing about the series has been replaced by Ikeda Elaiza.

Although her cleavage is covered, that is Shinozaki Ai.

Sono Sion had a bounce back 2015 after making his worst film ever, Tokyo Tribe in 2014.

While non of them were classics, Real Oni Gokko, Shinjuku Swan and Love & Peace showed that Sono Sion had not lost his touch.

This gave me hope that the movie version of Minna Esper Dayo! could set right what the dorama did wrong.

That Sono Sion would distill the essence of the story about a group of virgins with superpowers into a tenga tight 2 hour script.

Unfortunately, Sono Sion has lost any concept of pacing as the first half of the movie basically retells the dorama but at an extremely fast pace.

Things just happened one after another so that Sono Sion could get to whatever new ending he wanted to do.

The best parts of the dorama which was the triangle between Sometani Shota, Kaho and Mano Erina is completely nullified.

It is impossible for the audience to gain any empathy for the characters because they are not allowed to breath.

Yup, that plastic lips AKB girl is in this as well.

Yes, there's plenty of eye-candy.

But eye-candy without a passable story with decent pacing is not enjoyable.

Seriously, even so bad its good fanservice shows like Jyouou Virgin is much more entertaining because of pacing and it doesn't try to be too clever.

Sono Sion's reason for doing this movie is not to fix the Minna Esper Dayo! dorama.

His reason is to do some stupid story about Shometani Shota's fated one who he met when he was still in his mother's womb and some sort of metaphorical story about sex and society's attitudes with everyone in the town turning horny.

I could not give a fuck about trying to make sense of it because Sono Sion already lost me 5 minutes into the movie.

All the fanservice in the world cannot save this movie. Sono Sion forgot that what made Love Exposure work was the interesting relationship between the 3 characters but in this movie, he does not even spend time developing any relationship.

Kaho was smart to avoid the movie. Not even she could have saved it.

Someone needs to tell Sono Sion that less is more.

The movie is so bad pacing-wise, it makes the dorama look like Soredemo Ikite Yuku.

Do not watch this crap.

Is Sono Sion no longer capable of recapturing the past glories of Noriko's Dinner Table and Love Exposure?

Has he joined Miike Takashi as another gifted director who can't just create a good movie anymore?

I guess we'll find out when his next movie Hiso Hiso Hoshi comes out.