Parky At the Pictures (26/9/2025)

(Reviews of Happyend)

HAPPYEND.

Having captured his father's farewell performance in the deeply moving documentary, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus (2023), Neo Sora makes his narrative feature debut with Happyend, a disconcerting study of surveillance culture that's nowhere near as futuristic as we might wish to believe.

Best friends Kou (Yukito Hidaki) and Yuta (Hayao Kurihara) attend a Tokyo high school and have formed a secret music research club with Tomu (Arazi), Ming (Shina Peng), and Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi). After nearly being caught in a police raid on an underground club, Yuta and Kou are thrilled when the DJ entrusts them with a hard-drive of his set. Sneaking back into school, they dodge the nightwatchman to spend the night in the music room. At dawn, they prank Principal Nagai (Shiro Sano) by standing his flashy yellow sports car on its bumper and he is busy questioning them when an earthquake tremor dumps the vehicle on its roof.

The studious Fumi (Inori Kilala) congratulates Kou on the stunt because he is from a Korean background and less privileged than Yuta, who is wary of Fumi's influence, as she is part of a subversive group that protests against the authoritarian prime minister. Cross when Kou fails to show up for a night out, Yuta is also miffed when the principal instals a state-of-the-art facial recognition surveillance system at the school and confiscates the music-making equipment.

Creating a distraction with the earthquake alarm, they steal the music decks while no one is watching the CCTV and set up a new studio. But Yuta is less than pleased when Kou leaves early to join Fumi and he seems unconcerned when one of the others warns him that he should make the most of the group's time together because they will go their separate ways when they graduate. But Kou joins Fumi and teacher Okada (Ayumu Nakajima) on a demonstration and mother Fukuko (Pushim) has to plead with the principal not to punish Kou, as it would count against his naturalisation application. She slaps him on the way home for accusing her of wanting an easy life, when she has to work long hours in her restaurant to make ends meet.

Kuo gets into trouble again, when Yuta browbeats him into helping him move the musical kit and they get stopped by the cops and Kuo is frogmarched home to get his ID card. The following day, Fumi leads a class walkout when a civil defence officer comes to speak exclusively to Japanese students and her fellow rebels join her in occupying the principal's study after they are caught on the CCTV and receive punishment points against their records. Kou backs down, as he can't afford any more trouble and hangs out with his old pals. But he dons a crash helmet to deliver food to the office after Fumi refuses to eat the takeaway ordered by the principal.

During a rehearsal for the graduation ceremony, the principal offers to consider removing the surveillance system if the car prank culprit owns up. Fumi accuses him of going back on his word, but some students back the need for security and a full-scale row breaks out before Yuta goes to the microphone and declares that he pulled the stunt alone as a joke and he apologises with a grin.

Tomu leaves to study in America and the gang see him off on the bus. Ming and Ata-chan are going to graduation dinner with her parents (after he wore an rude design on the back of his jacket during graduation). Yuta and Kou are left together, but the latter makes his excuses and they part promising to hook up again soon (having been almost inseparable since kindergarten). They go their different ways, as Kou has been awarded a scholarship to college, leaving Yuta to realise that things can never simply stay the same.

This poignant conclusion leaves the teenagers at the start of a new chapter in their lives with the city and the country teetering on the edge of a precipice that could signal the end before it has even begun. It's a sobering thought, but this is the predicament facing the youth of today, as our increasingly vulnerable planet's temperature rises, AI threatens to obliterate existing working patterns, and the rise of right-wing populism makes the future look ominously bleak.

Coaxing canny performances out of his young cast and knowing precisely where to place Bill Kirstein's and let it rest or glide, Neo Sora dots the action with throwaway scenes that create a sense of lives being lived in defiance of creeping anxiety. Ming is amused as her friend mops himself into a corner, while Yuta is amazed to discover that the female boss of the music shop where he works is a no mean DJ. Yet this deadpan microcosmic satire drifts in places, as the daunting message seeps in (ironically in a week in which Keir Starmer has announced his intention to introduce compulsory ID cards] that humanity has allowed the potential of digital technology to slip through its fingers and land in the grasp of the rich and powerful who will harness it to protect themselves and oppress everyone else.

That said, this isn't solely an exercise in techno-paranoia, as Sora places his faith in the intrepidity of youth to combat social conservatism and uses Lia Ouyang Rusli's hybrid electro/piano score to suggest that civilisation will never entirely succumb to totalitarianism as long as there is music and a teenage rebel who is prepared to give the Man the middle finger.