My Girlfriend is a Cyborg

Title: My Girlfriend is a Cyborg / Cyborg She (Boku no Kanojo wa Saibōgu)
Year: 2008
Duration: 2 hours

Foreword
It is love between a human and a cyborg. Can it work between them?

Story
It is November 22, 2007. Jirou Kitamura (Keisuke Koide) is spending his 20th birthday alone. As he buys a birthday present for himself, he sees a girl (Haruka Ayase). The girl is attracted by him. She sits opposite him in a restaurant and claims that it's her birthday too. They exchange birthday presents but she presses his head into the cake, dirtying his face. She pulls Jirou out of the restaurant without paying. Jirou finds himself attracted to the girl. But after a few hours, the girl insists she has to leave.

One year later, Jirou is again celebrating his birthday alone in the same place. A twin of the girl appears in front of him. This girl, however, has been sent to save him from being killed in a gun attack by a future version of himself. She's a cyborg, made after the girl he saw a year ago. Despite her cute appearance, she is strong, and her behavior is strange. Can you imagine her eating his monitor lizard at his home? She comes to Jirou's aid whenever he is in danger and saves many other lives too.

Jirou soon relies on her for everything and also falls for her. She protects him from being bullied by classmates and also his lecturer who often throws chalk at him. However, when she cannot return his feelings, he gets irritated and forbids her from seeing him unless she can do so. He begins to regret this, especially when she is still helping him while trying not to be seen by him. An earthquake happens and Jiro is trapped underground. The girl appears to help him but her lower "body" is crushed.

After telling Jirou that she now understands his feelings, she stops functioning. Distraught, Jirou spends the next 61 years trying to rebuild her. He eventually succeeds after making many replicas of her. She still has the habit of pressing his head into every birthday cake. He passes away with her beside him.

The story doesn't end there, however. In the future, a girl is stunned to see a cyborg on display that looks just like her among other cyborgs. She is curious, and buys it to experience the memories stored in her hard-drive. She goes back in time to meet Jirou on his 20th birthday in 2007. She has to vanish to return to the future when there is a time limit.

Her mannerisms match the cyborg which later appears to him. After Jirou's death, she is preserved in a museum, then put up for auction in the 22nd century. That is why the girl meets it. She is touched by Jirou's love. She later stays in the past to marry Jirou and spend her life with him.

Actually this is supposed to be Jirou's fate. Future Jirou becomes rich through a lottery ticket he has bought. But wealth means nothing to him as the gun accident in the restaurant leaves him disabled. He decides to send back a cyborg to change his fate. This makes him experience true love too in the process.

Conclusion
The film by South Korean director Kwak Jae Yong sparked a manga adaptation by Akihiro Nakamura, which was released on Oct 17, 2008. It was published in Kodansha Weekly Young Magazine. The film was quite daring to rely on two actors for 90% of the movie. It does not pay off when both are not acting well as they struggle with many scenes. I was quite lucky to catch it on television instead of watching it in the cinema.

It confused me initially as I could not differentiate between the girl and the cyborg. They look equally unreasonable and hardly humane for torturing poor Jirou, who has been trying desperately to adjust his own life with and without the girl. Haruka Ayase acts better as the cyborg than the girl.

She enters his life for no particular reason. His self-esteem is also destroyed when she behaves like his bodyguard and he often gets teased by his friends. Keisuke Koide has portrayed Jirou as a nasty coward, disregarding what the cyborg has done for him and only regrets his action when she is destroyed.

The earthquake scene is like a low-budget computer gimmick. I really shake my head at its low standard. The ending is quite a u-turn which is unexpected, but it doesn't leave a big impact on the story. Only watch the movie if you are fans of the actors.

Sukting's ratings :

On acting : ** (Scale of 5)

On story : ** (Scale of 5)