The film Neo Sora’s Happyend shows a preview of their social conditions before introducing any of the characters. Happyend is also striking in its teenage drama and political critique, though the film never successfully attempts to resolve or blend these two opposing scales of society.
The film envisions a not-too-distant future marked by climate change, and its subsequent shocks pose an ever-looming threat. The earthquake and tsunami in 2011, along with the nuclear disaster, helped lay the foundations for these changes. In Sora’s world, the country endlessly circulates these warnings, sending apocalyptic alerts through cell phones only to retract them moments later. Destructive corporations are quick to join the frenzy as well. Predatory enterprises immediately follow suit always writing Emergency Sale 20% Off Canned Goods for profit.
There is as much farce as there is brutal strife in the world in Happyend for the protagonist is trying to make sense out of everything. This is a recalibrated feature of the story’s fundamental gadget. Sora equates the whole country with a Tokyo high school, which comes to life in the shape of a principal (Sano Shirô) who, in a vain attempt to retain his dominion over his pets, puts in an order for a modern psychological monitoring system for the entire school. Panopty is a sleek repackaging of Foucauldian concepts that interact with the inhabitants of the school in a student population control, multifunctional, and self-destructive style game. The downside balance of the software operates with a rigorously meticulous algorithmic system: dress code infraction minus one point, showing the middle finger to the cam minus three.
Ironically, there is no demographic group that is more immune to mechanical discipline and punishment than teenagers. Happyend captures the never-ending fun and frustration of a crew of misfits who, with a clever prank, caused Panopty’s installation in the first place. Sora uncovers their scheme in the style of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, including the detail of a guard being lured by cat sounds from a phone. Their act of defiance of overturning their principal’s sports car and showcasing it as Protest Art in a courtyard clearly demonstrates their feelings toward authority.
A recurrent conflict around autonomy and subservience unfolds across Happyend, with the self-empowered students adopting a more rigid posture against the violation of their freedom. It’s a bad YA plot by an author who was too attentive during sociology class. To Sora’s credit, the group members feel whole and not merely age-specific stereotypes. The relationship between Yuta (Kurihara Hayao) and Kou (Hidaka Yukito), best friends who are growing apart even as the rest of their friend group becomes closer, is the most developed in the film as the impact of radical politics on their friendship becomes hard to ignore.
Happyend tries to balance its plot as a cartoonish casual racist viewpoint from the principal blended with teasing satire and more serious commentary. It fails to find balance when biracial non-Japanese citizen Tomu (Arazi) as incongruous multiculturalism is moonlighting as an identity crisis.
Sora steps away from the archetypal sympathizing adult stance utilizing feeling fiction lends to children’s idealism as they slowly shift into a more realistic viewpoint. The school sit-in leaves them exposed to the soft edge of their pain. In calming the infliction, the distance created by the film’s surveillance state setting is sabotaging their pain. With close focus of her perceived violence toward students, Sora seems to analyze rather than feel, “act” on the fury captured through the student’s energy. The soundscape shouts their turbulent existence, but identification with people in the now, standstill makes the film feel as though shrinks are driving its attempts to capture admiration, adoration, and affection through appearing contrary to the dominant opinion for the present.
Sora fights to balance teenage rebellion with the use of the student’s experience as a canary in the coal mine for society’s future. Additionally, Happyend never fully fulfills a deeper Japan examination because the movie doesn’t show enough of the world past high school. It’s a confident narrative feature debut, with plenty of insight into the direction of a nation and generation, but lacks the blend between the small and big picture that Sora thinks about.
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