Japanese drama ‘Happyend’ details coming of age in a surveillance state

Sora's richly conceived teen characters exist on the precipice of adulthood. As they approach graduation, they face vast, unquantifiable unknowns on the other side. After a practical joke aimed at the wealthy, possibly corrupt principal Nagai (Shirō Sano) is branded an act of terrorism, the stern headmaster institutes a state-of-the-art surveillance system throughout the school, which leads to a multitude of responses from the film's central friend group, exacerbating existing tensions and forcing an uneasy magnification of their respective backgrounds.

We first meet the laid-back, mischievous Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and the more cautious but equally adventurous Kou (Yukito Hidaka) as they sneak into an underground techno rave while stuffing the white button-down shirts of their school uniforms into their trouser pockets, lest they be clocked as underage. The event is soon cleared out by police—this overreach plays out casually, as though it were a common occurrence—and both teens are quickly identified via facial recognition apps on the cops’ cell phones. They're let off with a warning, but not before Kou, a fourth-generation Korean who hopes to become naturalized, is admonished for not carrying his identification papers.

Well before the central plot kicks in, Sora establishes the dramatic parameters of his totalitarian world: a quietly dystopian Tokyo in which everything from advertisements projected on clouds to casual racism is widely accepted, to the point of feeling mundane. As the night wears on, Yuta and Kou join the rest of their friend group for an impromptu dance party in a school classroom, and the following morning, principal Nagai's brand-new, bright yellow sports car mysteriously happens to be standing upright. Perhaps it's an elaborate prank, or it could be the strange result of one of the many minor earthquakes felt throughout the film, each accompanied by warning sirens, and each discussed as though it could finally lead to "the big one."

There's a nihilistic streak to Happyend, between the menace of natural disaster hovering over every scene, and the readily welcomed authoritarianism of their principal as soon as he feels slighted. Larger political forces are also at play, between news stories about Japan's draconian prime minister, and scattered shots of protesters being attacked by SWAT teams, though these largely play out in the peripheries of the frame. The students have enough issues of their own to worry about, but their predicament plays out like a focused microcosm of these larger concerns.

The school's surveillance tech involves a litany of security cameras that instantly recognize each student and their misbehavior—docking “points” from them in the process—and a giant screen in the courtyard that displays their transgressions for all to see. The intent appears to be keeping the students in line through fear, but they end up having a fair amount of fun with this enormous video setup, taking advantage of its blindspots and programming inconsistencies. Despite the movie's dour premise, it has no dearth of teenage frolic, thanks to the bustling body language with which Yuta, Kou, and the other three members of their tight-knit circle enter each scene. There's the short-statured Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi), who brushes off jokes about his height and returns banter in kind. He has something of a romantic dynamic with Ming (Shina Peng), a girl of Chinese ethnicity, whose casual ribbing of her pals is laced with affection. The group is rounded out by the meek but empathetic Tomu (Arazi), who, like Ming and Kou, finds himself torn between cultures as the son of a Japanese mother and a Black American father from Detroit, where he finally hopes to visit after graduation.

Two overarching stories play out in parallel across Happyend, though they become increasingly entangled. The first concerns the student body's reaction to being surveilled. The response is mixed. Some students welcome it, but the faction vocally opposed to these measures is led by the boisterous, idealistic Fumi (Kilala Inori). Kou just so happens to be smitten with her, introducing questions of why exactly he follows her into proverbial battle against the school. The second, interrelated story concerns the shifting dynamics of Kou and Yuta's friend group as they prepare for life after college, and life without seeing each other every day. The more Kou gets involved with Fumi, and with protests against the principal, the more Yuta stands his ground as someone allergic to change, and unwilling to get involved because he would rather spend his life actually living (especially if an earthquake could kill him at any moment).

This dynamic between Kou and Yuta—as well as those of the remaining pals, who each begin to carefully consider their futures—plays out subtly across numerous hangout scenes, to which the central cast brings an insatiable zest for life. Sora's gentle, methodical visual approach allows not just observation, but rumination. The camera’s stillness is broken up only by the occasional quick movement toward school windows, when the students rush to peer out at the giant screen as some new development unfolds (or in less serious moments, like when Ata-chan dons a skirt and flips off the camera for a lark, landing him in hot water).

The corners of Sora's Tokyo are populated by a diverse and energetic roster of adolescents, whose identities come under a microscope as soon as the big brother tech is introduced. Although the majority of the students are ethnically Japanese, the city's status as a global hub comes into view when loyalties are questioned and casual stereotypes are thrown about, hitting the occasional Black, Chinese, or Korean student in the process. These are kids born and raised in Tokyo, who speak Japanese and who are part and parcel of the school's fabric—right up until they aren't, at the whims of their administrators.

The film, in this way, zeroes in on contemporary issues of Japanese identity and its rigidity. However, it also draws from the New York half of Sora's upbringing, in the shadow of the PATRIOT Act and the Forever Wars on terror, as though the filmmaker—like his characters—were attempting to reconcile dueling halves of himself by threading the needle between interconnected forms of oppression stemming from paranoia. As the characters gradually recognize and oppose these forces, affection and mutual understanding begin to guide the movie's moral compass, creating a vibrant emotional infrastructure worth preserving through radical action.

Ultimately, Happyend is a film not just about standing up to injustice, but about what this actually entails when life’s hurdles are thrown in one’s path, and how politics at-large can become entwined with the personal in quiet, unassuming ways. Its teenage tensions play out in lively, heartrending scenes, but Sora also ensures a deeply human grounding to his dramatic turns. It's hard not to come away loving each and every character, and—as the world spins out of control—wishing they could stay together.