"My Bike Ignites!"

Woo! I got my DVD of Kamikaze Girls today. I ordered it the night I finished reading the novel, because the book was so great. The movie follows the book for the most part, but the plot does diverge a bit, especially towards the end. But that's okay, because the movie is grand fun in its own right. Actually, in many ways, it's even more quirky and bizarre. The screenplay didn't just change the story; it successfully augmented it. The additions they made suited the spirit of the story marvelously. The alterations, including a significant change in the order of certain key scenes, worked well enough. They took full advantage of the medium to create a spectacular, lush, vivid visual feast. In short, it was as beautiful as it was strange. And of course, it was supremely high in cheese. Not bad cheese like Cutey Honey, but good cheese like Moulin Rouge. My only problem with it involved a bit of scatological humor, because I really don't like that sort of thing. However it wasn't worse than various scenes in Shrek.

I also picked up the Kamikaze Girls manga, as long as I was at it. However, I found it to be rather disappointing. The adaptation of the novel's story was lackluster and didn't do it justice at all, and the additional stories included in the book were just not that good. ("Ichigo's Case" was decent, if not great. But if "The Pinky-Ring Princess" and "The Middle-Finger Princess" were not bound together with the other stories, I would actually throw them away. I feel like they are contaminating my bookshelf.) I recommend skipping the manga altogether, but read the novel and watch the movie.

I'd have to say I still like the novel best. There is such a richness to the story, so many subtleties that weren't conveyed in the movie. But the movie was a hilarious blast, definitely worthy fare.

(Oh, and if you were wondering about the title of this post, "My bike ignites!" is the opening line of the movie. That pretty well sets the tone, don't you think?)