Review of Umizaru (1st movie)

This movie features the lives of a group of cadets in the Japan Coast Guard academy who are training to be divers or called umizaru (sea monkey) by the local people where the training quarters are located (near Hiroshima). Ito Hideaki plays the lead character, Senzaki Daisuke who was a salesman and aspires to be a diver because he thought that it would be an "interesting" job. Along with 13 other cadets, they undergo a tough 50-day training to become qualified rescue divers.

Basically, I felt a mixture of emotions with regards to this movie and I divide it into to three sections:

1) The first section - training of the umizaru
At the beginning, we see how these guys with their individual reasons as to why they want to become divers come together and undergo the tough training e.g. swimming with weights of at least 20 kg, holding their breath underwater for 2 min 30 secs. It's quite interesting to see how the training is like and I have to admire the Japanese for their seriousness when it comes to making movies of a specific occupation or theme. You can see that the cast did put in a lot of hard work and Ito Hideaki and Kaito Ken were so tanned meaning they stayed outdoors for a long time. It was the same when I watched the making SP of Waterboys when I saw how the cast of 32 boys come together and learn synchro-swimming from scratch so kudos to the cast of Umizaru for their hard work.

2) The middle section - death of a fellow teammate
One of the guys drowned when he was trying to save someone. As a result of this, Senzaki (Ito) began to have a phobia of the sea and was having thoughts of giving up. The funeral was sad and dark so it sort of overshadows the chirpiness and light-hearted mood in the early section.

3) The last section - the final test
This part took up quite a bit of time with the guys undergoing the test in order to pass the course and Senzaki ended up in some trouble with his new partner, Mishima (Kaito). I won't elaborate on what happened but the way it developed was quite cliche and expected. That's when I start to get bored with this movie.

Besides the conclusion being rather "traditional" and conservative, the other grouse I have would be the relationship between Senzaki (Ito) and Kana (Kato Ai). These two got to know each other on the streets and Kana thought that she slept with Senzaki even though she was already drunk when they reached the hotel. As their relationship got very limited air time, it's hard to see how they actually come to like each other so this part was not very convincing. And during the scene where they kissed on the bus, it sure was funny to see them doing that with Kana's bag between them. That was so unnatural in my opinion.

In all, I think Umizaru is an OK film, nothing really spectacular but still worth spending 2 hours watching it (especially the training part). It's just that I thought that it started well but ended really sloppily so it does the theme a big disservice. Besides, the characters' are quite one-dimensional so there's not much exploration of their internal feelings.