From its opening moments, Neo Sora’s Happyend evokes a world aflame with uncertainty. Title cards bearing cryptic phrases about old systems, restless enforcers, and crumbling frameworks give way to the declaration: “Something big is about to change.” In context, the statement seems ominous, but it doesn’t take long for the film to articulate that its near-future vision of Japanese society is in dire need of a bouleversement. With the nation trembling in fear of a cataclysmic earthquake, its authority figures are all too eager to violate citizens’ rights under the guise of public safety. In the shadow of this ideological crisis, a tight knit friend group of puckish highschoolers comes apart at the seams as they hurtle, in divergent directions, toward adulthood.
We first find best friends Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Ko (Yukito Hidaka) sneaking through the back door of a club to hear a DJ set. When the police barge in shortly after, and the crowd disperses, Yuta remains, bopping in a trance-like state. Outside the club, they’re inventoried by officers with facial recognition software: “Shouldn’t you be at school?” becomes, “Let me see your papers,” when Ko’s status as a fourth-gen Korean immigrant appears on the cop’s phone screen. They all manage to slip away this time, running giddily through empty streets and dancing till the sun comes up, but the fault lines in this platonic pair are clear; Yuta is happy to shut out the world around him for the sake of a good time, and Ko – more vulnerable in a society whose longstanding racism towards “outsiders” continues unabated – could easily end up paying the price for both their mischief.
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When the boys vandalise the principal’s prized sports car, the prank is dubbed “terrorism” by school officials and a new security measure is installed. A high-tech surveillance network, aptly named “Panopty”, consists of cameras linked to a large screen looming in the courtyard, where students are docked points for misconduct. And this authoritarian system (riddled with glitches and oversights, of course) comes to represent the problems that grip the nation at large.
Happyend strikes a remarkable balance between social satire and adolescent drama, finding points of alignment between the humour of everyday teen life and the absurdity of the bureaucracies that shape it. Sora’s visual language of lyricism merges seamlessly with his knack for physical comedy, fusing together sight gags with gestures of intimacy in his ensemble and charging almost every seriocomic beat with the appropriate symbolic weight. The film’s location of a fraying coming-of-age story in a politicized dystopia makes for a fruitful juxtaposition. The children, after all, are the future, and widespread change often begins at the level of education. When a group of radicalised youngsters finally manage to put their words to action in the final stretch, we’re shown the possibility of a better world; the path is long and the destination may not be in sight, but knowing it’s there is half the battle, and – as Sora repeatedly demonstrates – sacrifice can be its own reward along the way.
