A misfit squad of losers discovers that cheering isn't about pom-poms—it's about screaming hope into the void.
Momoko (Yui Aragaki) is a quiet and lonely high school girl who's only passion is to cheer traditional cheer squad, but all she could gather were good for nothing guys, who could not find places in school. They start the cheer squad with a disaster, but when they finally find the true meaning of "cheering" someone, their passion becomes power and gives strength to those that are cheered.
Acting
Yui Aragaki's transformation from wallflower to warrior.
Direction
Watanabe frames cheering like a battle cry.
Director
Kensaku Watanabe
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Bukatsu culture in 2000s Japan made cheerleading a battlefield for social status; this film deliberately inverts that hierarchy.
Shota Sometani (Tamura) would become an arthouse darling—his awkward energy here is proto-Somebody.
JP
