Manga fans be warned!
I loved the Mars manga, it's one of my favourites of all time so as an ardent drama lover I was understandably very excited for this adaptation. Immediately the short length of the 10 episode series with each episode little more than 20 minutes long was slightly disappointing (for reference the manga is a 15 volume emotional rollercoaster). Still I held out hope that they would just focus on the first section of the manga and do that justice, and whilst they did follow the plot points of the manga, there were various things that were amended and added for the sake of making the drama more appealing to the teen audience as well as the omission of plot points such as Rei's motorcycling career. This made it a bit of a confusing watch for me at first, but after telling myself an adaptation does not have to be 100% true to its source material I soldiered on.
The main leads of Rei and Kira were interestingly cast, both are complex and playful and make for enjoyable viewing, however they both seem to lack that slight undercurrent of darkness which make their characters so interesting. Masao's creepiness is really played up, maybe even overly done, to the point sometimes I was wondering if I was seeing Masataka Kubota's Light Yagami instead of his Masao at time.
The music was great and a plus for the series, all in all it was a good watch but not a great one. i enjoyed it mostly for the novelty and am glad I saw it but probably won't be rewatching any time soon.
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