Maison Ikkoku is an anime series which has 96 episodes. This movie is just 1 hour 30 minutes long. You can see where I'm going with this.
They basically picked a lot of scenes throughout the series from beginning to end and mashed them together in a feature length movie somehow. This series had a lot of plotpoints which makes it near impossible to cut up into a single movie. The overall plot stays the same but a lot of important scenes which added to the experience when watching the 96-episode anime gets the axe. And I think everyone who watched the anime would feel the same way when watching this.
The following parts of the review contains spoilers for those who didn't watch Maison Ikkoku.
Maison Ikkoku is a long-running romcom anime. So it's bound that when they cut a scene it'll piss someone off who actually loved that scene. I'll tell you some of the scenes that I missed: the first kiss scene between Godai and Kyoko, the entire arc about Godai getting a job from Yagami's dad, the "even if it's by a day, please live longer than me" dialogue from Kyoko etc. I understand why the Godai getting a job arc was cut because it was too long to fit in this movie and it could be considered a filler arc when compared to the grand scheme of things. In fact, I can probably understand most of the cuts. It's because of time constraints.
But they've also edited scenes that are included in the film for the same reason. To me this was a bigger sin. The one scene that was obviously guilty of this was Kyoko slapping Godai at the train station before graduation exam. A beautiful scene got ruined due to the excessive amount of cuts.
I'll stop here as anymore and I'd be considered a whiner.
Maybe I already am.
One thing I like about some modern recap films is that they sometime add new content to the story. But this film is probably too backdated for that. I half-expected some new scene from the manga to make it here since the original series cut so many little things from the manga. The animation is probably also the same as the series. There's no touched up animation like you might've expected.
So yeah, I don't really recommend this movie if you've recently finished watching Maison Ikkoku. But 96 episodes is a long journey, and you might want to rewatch some earlier episodes without accidentally rewatching the entire series. So this might be the solution you're looking for. Other than that I'd say the filler "Final Chapter" movie and the 90's OVA is worth your time more.
I'll rate this film the same score I rate every other recap film in my list that have no new interesting material.
That's it. Thanks for reading my review.
