So, we join our intrepid sojourners into the world of jazz in the middle of summer school (remedial math no less) with our lead, Tomoko absent-mindedly staring out the window watching the school brass bandpreparing to leave for an away game while her math teacher sweats anddrones on about his subject.  Add a late boxed lunch delivery man, an ill-fated train in trip in scorching heat to deliver said lunch, one brass band taken down by food poisoning and it equates the girls of the summer remedial math class being forced into filling in for them.  Not enough members for a full brass band the only member of the brass band to come out of the lunch unscathed guilt trips the hapless girls into forming a big bandgroup to play for the next baseball game.

In the journey from this point to the heartful battle of the bands finale we see the core group of girls go from mildy annoyed, terrible beginners to avid fans of the music and fairly accomplished musicians.  In reality, the actor/actresses actually took the time to learn their instruments and play surprisingly well for the final performance of the movie.

The main characters include Tomoko (Juri Ueno), a girl who cannot stick to anything (sax). Her friend, Yoshie is the typical boy-obsessed girl (trumpet).  Naomi (Yukari Toyoshima) plays the archetype weight watcher(drums) and Sekiguchi (Yuika Motokariya), is the shy and quiet one in glasses with hidden talent for woodwinds (trombone).  The brass bandlunch disaster survivor and organizer of the group is Takou (Yuta Hiraoka) and we round out our main cast with the math teacher with a love for jazz (Naoto Takenaka) and a secret to boot.

Yes,this movie is straight formula.  Yes, this movie's plot is pretty thin.  None the less, I believe you'll found yourself drawn in by itscharm, its fun and you'll be wearing that shit eating grin as thecredits roll.  The girls are charming, the story memorable (if commercial as hell) and it presents itself with all the nostalgia of seeing a gawky teenager rush headlong into life.

Densha Otoko The Movie
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because, well, it isn't exactly what I'd call great.  Densha Otoko the TV series was a wonderful gem that followed the story of a timid otaku who dared to find love and report about it on the internet.

Densha the movie does manage to most of the major points and in itself isn't terrible. Some of the laughs are there, Densha's internet support group (a bunchof folk on a message board) is similarly silly and loveable.  I guess the first problem is the casting.  Replacing the delightfully dorky Atsushi Ito in the main role is Takayuki Yamada.  While he isn't terrible I can't help but feel he looked way to much like a pop star in dork's clothing.  When he makes the transformation it isn't like we put the otaku in the stylish clothing, it is more like he just finally shed the otaku skin.  As for Hermes, the well heeled office lady love interest, we find the lovely Misaki Ito replaced with Miki Nakatani who in all honesty doesn't hold a candle to her.  It kind of feels like Hermes has been replaced with someones mom.  I'll admit, I'm probably more concerned about the plot compression (which has to happen whenstories get translated into movies) than the casting.  I don't think the movie has sufficient time to help the viewer develop sympathetic feelings for the characters.  Also, the wonderfully diverse cast of internet characters is somewhat smaller and are barely even touched on in the movie version.  I don't feel it is a horrible movie but I'm probably a bit tainted by seeing the series first.

Oh, if you do watch the movie version, there are some cameos by characters from the TV series as well as a special little bit after the end of the credits featuring the original Densha and Hermes.