Collar x Malice Movie: Deep Cover

I really don’t know why the score is so low because I thought this was a pretty good movie and a very faithful adaptation. My only guess is that the few people that have watched it didn’t originally play the game and had no idea what was going on.

Story
Surprisingly it wasn’t an adaptation of the game’s story but more a side quest during said story. It made sense in the context of X day and wrapped its story accordingly. I was genuinely surprised of how it turned out since most of the visual novel adaptations that I’ve watched often want to do as many routes ... as possible in 12 episodes which is impossible. So, what about this new story and X day case, was it good ? I would say yes, it was very much on par with what you could expect from the game, dare I say it was better than the events in unlimited (mostly Shiraishi’s route). The climax was great, everyone giving their all to catch the culprit and was very collar x malice like. In fact a lot of scenes had that collar x malice feel.

Art
Not gonna sugar coat it, the animation wasn’t the greatest. The chara designs translated well into an animated form, which is amazing considering the level of detail of the style of hanamura sensei. But yeah animation mostly stiff and lazy, they had moments where they put in some effort but overall it is the weakest point of the movie.

Sound
The fact that they took another visual kei group to make the opening and endings, akin to plastic tree for the games, was awesome and definitely fits the vibe. Sound design was great too and the osts were great too. Fitted the vibe too. Now as for the voice action, Ichika’s va did great, her voice was Ichika even if she is undubbed in the games, it just felt natural. They brought Konishi into the mix and he was great, as were the other guys.

Characters
This new character was very interesting, keeping the theme of justice of the whole game. Everyone was also handled with care. They didn’t act out of character, unlike some vn adaptations. They all had their moment to shine. Just a nitpick, Sasazuka didn’t get as much screentime as the others but that’s just me. The relationship between Ichika and Yanagi was as sweet as ever and I’m glad he was the main love interest for the movie

Enjoyment
Obviously, as my review reeks of subjectivity, I enjoyed the movie. Maybe the search for it for more than a year was also to blame for how hyped I was when I finally found it.

Overall
This is a product made for the fans, for the ones that have played all the routes of the first game. I cannot stress enough that if you’re new to the series don’t watch it. It literally spoils who the lead of the terrrorists is, the one that is revealed in the last secret route, at the last chapter.