Flying Colors (film)

Plot

Sayaka Kudo is a gyaru who wears miniskirts and dyes her hair blonde. Although she is a 2nd year senior high school student, she is on par academically with 4th grade elementary school students. She frequently transfers between schools because she is unable to make friends, and was once suspended for being caught with cigarettes. Eventually she attends a private all-girls high school where she plays and enjoys her extra-scholarly activities while skipping study altogether.

To prepare her for her university entrance examination, her mother decides to send her to Seiho Cram School. However, when the school director, Yoshitaka Tsubota, hears about Sayaka's academic problem, he makes it his personal goal to help her enter the university of her choice, Keio University, a prestigious university that is considered one of the most difficult to enter in Japan and to get back at her father.

After her father, whose main goal is to get her brother Ryuta into pro baseball, labels her an "air-head" and says she and her mother are being scammed by the cram school only for money, Sayaka becomes determined to study hard to prove her father wrong. Over the course of the summer holidays of her second year through to the exams at the end of her third year in senior high school, Sayaka studies extremely hard and goes without sleep to the extent that she nods off in her high school classes. She even dyes her hair back to black and cuts it to show her resolve. Her results progressively improve on practice tests and her academic deviation value increases tremendously from 30 to 70 in this short span of time.

Cast

Production

The film Flying Colors was first unveiled to the Japanese media on 13 November 2014. It is based on the bestselling novel Gakunen Biri no Gyaru ga 1 nen de Hensachi o 40 Agete Keio Daigaku ni Geneki Gokaku Shita Hanashi (学年ビリのギャルが1年で偏差値を40上げて慶應大学に現役合格した話) by Nobutaka Tsubota, the director of a private school. In this novel, Nobutaka writes about his experiences with his real-life pupil Sayaka Kobayashi and how she improved from a high school student who only had the knowledge of 4th year elementary school student to one who qualified for the prestigious Keio University in just 1.5 years. As of May 2015, this novel has sold over 1 million copies.

Reception

The film grossed ¥285.1 million on its opening weekend at the Japanese box office. As of May 17, the film had grossed US$12.3 million. It was the eighth highest-grossing Japanese film (together with Love Live! The School Idol Movie) and the third highest-grossing Japanese live-action film at the Japanese box office in 2015, with ¥2.84 billion (US$23.6 million). The film was released in China on April 14, 2016, earning US$3.3 million on its opening weekend.

On Film Business Asia, Derek Elley gave the film a 7 out of 10, calling it "an entertaining time-waster that hides its didactic messages beneath likeable performances by the two leads".