Cyborg She

Directed by Korean Kwak Jae Young who helmed the hit romantic comedy My Sassy Girl (2001), this Japanese film plays like My Sassy Cyborg.
The set-up is a familiar one to fans of manga and anime - a young geeky guy suddenly gets the girl of his dreams.
But there is a catch. In Chobits, the lovely lass is an android; in Oh My Goddess!, she is a deity; and here, she is a robot, or cyborg, as she prefers to be called.
Jiro (Keisuke Koide) is celebrating his birthday alone again at a restaurant when a girl (Haruka Ayase) plonks herself down at his table.
After a memorable night out together, she vanishes from his life only to reappear a year later. That is when Jiro learns that she has been sent from the future by himself.
Ayase is all rough mannerisms and brute strength as the cyborg while Koide is sweetly nerdy.
The love story is a predictable one, although the final 30 minutes unexpectedly offers a visually spectacular disaster.
Kwak, who also wrote the script, drags out the ending but does provide one final poignant twist in this time- travel romance.
(ST)