Review by Pamela Zoslov
The Japanese film OUR LITTLE SISTER is based on Umimachi Diary (“Seaside Town Diary”), a Josei manga series by Akimi Yoshida. (Josei manga means “comics for women,” and is aimed at older teenage girls and young women.) The highly regarded director Hirozaku Koreeda adapted the series, transforming Yoshida’s serial and its painterly art into a lovely live-action drama.The story centers on the three Kouda sisters, 29-year-old Sachi (Haruka Ayase), 22-year-old Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa) and 19-year-old Chika (Kaho). They live together in Kamakura, a seaside resort town just south of Tokyo, in a house owned by their grandmother. Their father left the family for another woman years ago, and their mother left not long afterward.
