100-nichikan Ikita Wani

After having thoroughly enjoyed the original manga a number of moths ago, I was equally as excited to experience the anime adaptation of 100-nichikan Ikita Wani and see exactly how they would adapt what was an incredibly short, incredibly bittersweet story into a feature length film. The answer to this conundrum turned out to be very simple - they didn't.

Story - (4)
Character - (5)
Clocking it at a mere 63 minutes, this film barely managed to meet the minimum of what one could consider worthy of a theatrical release and even at that meager runtime, only half of the film is an actual adaptation of ... the source material. While I do entirely understand that they were always going to have to make drastic changes to make the story work as a cohesive work of cinema, rather than individual ten second jokes, I feel as though they ended up losing track of what made the original story so great. The relatability of Wani's struggles and the theme of making the most of one's life while they can were both essential elements to the charm of the manga that were glossed over in a mere 25-30 minutes in the film. Instead of focusing in on these key elements, the film chooses to introduce an entirely new plotline set 100 days after the end of the manga, telling the tale of Kaeru and his similar attempt at befriending the other characters of the story. While this new content does make a semi-successful attempt at showing the ways in which one can overcome and move on from grief, it ultimately feels largely superfluous given how unrelated it is from the original point of the story. The characters themselves also ended up disappointing compared to the manga. While some of their individual personalities and character traits did shine through, the short runtime again hindered the ability for any true insight or connection to be made.

Art - (5)
Sound - (6)
Both the art and sound of 100-nichikan Ikita Wani were fine enough, though lacking in any particular stand out moments. Obviously the first element that one may notice when viewing the artwork of the film is the character designs, with each character being portrayed as a different anthropomorphized animal. While there is not anything inherently wrong with the designs, with each one being pleasant enough to look at, it was mildly disappointing to see no real meaning behind these designs. Where other recent series such as Beasters and Odd Taxi utilized the animal designs in interesting and unique ways for greater story, character and artistic purposes, this film simply goes with the designs out of the generic quest to create an instant cute appeal to the art. The actual animation was rather lackluster as well, with there being very little animation outside of simple dialogue scenes. The score, while slightly better in comparison, was also nothing to write home about. Though any music that did play was sweet and pleasant to listen to, the large gaps in-between such appearances left me wishing there was more.

Enjoyment - (5)
Though the short runtime of the film did bring many other issues into play, it at least did help prevent the film from getting boring or stale at any point, with the film ultimately flying be fairly fast. In addition, the solid foundation of the story on which the film was based meant that I overall did not dislike the film. Instead, I was simply left feeling let down and mildly frustrated at how an enjoyable little manga had been turned into such a bland and uninspired film. Thus I must insist that to any who have read this far and are genuinely interested in the premise of this story, the manga is a far better experience, being both more entertaining and slightly shorter than the film.

Overall - (5)
In summary, though not exactly being a bad film overall, 100-nichikan Ikita Wani is an incredibly bland and uninspired adaptation of a charming short web manga that would have ultimately been better off being left as such.