Six years after Toyoda adapted "Aoi Haru" Happinet Pictures and Toho produced another adaptation of one of Japan's most popular juvenile delinquent manga, Hiroshi Takahashi's "Kurōzu (Crows)" that ran from 1990 to 1998 and laid the ground for Matsumoto's disturbing tale. The only reason I mention "Blue Spring" is becuase of another manga adaptation that superficially bares a strong resemblence to it. Watching these kids beat each other to a pulp in the hallways, stabbing each other in bathroom stalls, and engaging in a dangerous rooftop test of manhood involving standing on the edge of the building and letting go of a railing while clapping gave audiences the same gruesome thrill as watching a slow motion car wreck. It was bleak, pessimistic, violent and wonderfully exciting mostly because the students of this school were so damn scary. Sure there had been umpteenth "teens gone wild" films made over the years in Japan (Ko Nakahira's "Crazed Fruit", Yasuharu Hasebe's "Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter", and Mitsuo Yanagimachi's "God Speed You Black Emperor" to name but a few), but Toyoda's "Blue Spring" may have been one of the best. While the blooming sakura trees out front may have fooled outsiders the interior of the school looked as if it was a bombed out war zone with doors kicked off hinges and black graffiti sprayed-painted everywhere.
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The resulting film starred Ryuhei Matsuda and Hirofumi Arai as two former boyhood friends who battled it out for supremacy at a terrifying high school.
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In 2001 maverick filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda adapted Taiyo Matsumoto's 1998 juvenile delinquent manga "Aoi Haru (Blue Spring)" to the big screen.