Oppai Volleyball is set in 1979 Kitakyushu and is about a young teacher, Mikako, who starts at a junior high school. Enthusiastic about the new job, she agrees to become the advisor for the boys volleyball club, which consists of 5 fairly perverted boys who can’t play a lick of volleyball. She motivates them by reluctantly agreeing to show them her oppai (boobs) if they win a game. It works, they start to try their best, and she begins to gain back confidence she lost previously as a teacher, but the school finds out about her promise.

It sounded really stupid, but I love Ayase Haruka a lot, so I decided to give it a try. Surprisingly, it ended up being a fairly decent watch. 1970s Kitakyushu has been gorgeously recreated and the fun, poppy period music adds to the effect. The group of boys in the club really are perverted, as most junior high school kids are, but it’s actually kept pretty tame. Their obsession with breasts does get a little grating at times, though. You spend the entire time wondering if she’s actually going to show anything. Actually, despite the name, however, the movie is more about Mikako and her journey to grow as a teacher, rather than her students. This in turn leads to a sort of limbo between funny and serious in the movie that I think detracts from it a little bit.

The one thing this movie really, really lacked was character development, or at least timely character development. The main focus of the first half of the movie is on the boys, and while you see them working hard at volleyball, you don’t really get the idea that they have grown or matured very much: their main objective is still to see boobs. It isn’t until much later in the movie that you even get to the main issue: Mikako’s past. There’s also a few static secondary characters such as Mikako’s colleague and an ex-boyfriend that leave you thinking “why are they even there?”

Overall, I thought it was a fun, lighthearted movie. If you can stand numerous chants of “oppai” and aren’t looking for anything too deep, I think it’s a good movie to watch. ★★★★☆