Coming of Age in the Surveillance State in the Perceptive Happyend
From the opening moments of director Neo Sora’s dystopian Japanese teen drama Happyend, it can feel like we’re building toward some kind of apocalyptic fallout. As news reports assure us of the encroaching certainty of some kind of cataclysmic earthquake, and a dictatorial government seizes upon that uncertainty and the innate desire for protection and societal order to amplify their repression, we wait for the dam to burst. In a subtly futuristic high school–we’re told it’s “a story about the near future,” a group of troublemaking friends likewise seems to await some transgression that will fracture the dynamic irrevocably, severing the bonds that have existed since childhood. And then … that moment never really comes.
That doesn’t make Happyend a bait-and-switch, so much as a more realistically wistful and nuanced look at the evolving nature of adolescent relationships than it initially might appear to be; a message running counter to the classically teenage attitude that decisions (and identities) are permanent things. Largely eschewing heightened melodrama, this is ultimately a film about acknowledging the shades of gray that exist in life, and between friends, and learning that it’s not simply a binary choice between options like idealism or hopelessness, rebellion or conformity. There exists a vast middle ground between the extremes in which we posture and position ourselves for societal acceptance, and we all get to decide at what point of the spectrum we want to settle.
A five-person group of incoming high school seniors form the core of the narrative–there’s the goofy and obstinate Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi) and his accommodating pal/maybe girlfriend Ming (Shina Peng), along with the thoughtful Tomu (Arazi). But the main dynamic revolves around the strained bromance between Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaka), childhood friends who function as co-leaders of their clique and inspire the others to relatively good-natured hooliganism, such as sneaking away from school in order to attend an underground EDM rave in the film’s opening scene. Happyend catches these two at the moment that their emerging adult selves begin to diverge, thrusting them into internal debate on what they genuinely want from friendship, what they expect from each other, who they want to be, and if these potential selves can be reconciled.
It’s a dynamic that surely will be familiar to viewers across the language and societal barrier from Japanese to English: It’s about the childhood friend from a different social circle or culture, with whom you share a close bond, but wonder whether you would ever have become friends if you met later in life, at a time when we’re less accommodating of differences than children. Yuta and Kou are from notably different worlds–where Yuta feels like a bit of a good-natured, upper crust slacker layabout who prefers to thumb his nose at authority from a safe distance, Kuo is from a Zainichi South Korean family residing in Japan, and faces considerably more inherent prejudice in his daily life as a result. As a “Special Permanent Resident,” his family can’t even vote in Japanese elections, making them another layer removed from the encroaching governmental tyranny that is occurring on the fringes of the narrative. Kuo was not born with anything close to the agency of Yuta, and as Kuo becomes more politically active and invested in ideas of inequality and justice after meeting more passionate fellow student Fumi (Kilala Inori), he can’t help but take greater note of the way that Yuta is willing to coast along, simply enjoying the privileges he possesses, rather than concerning himself with the fight to extend such privilege to anyone else.
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