A manga artist who can't write villains becomes obsessed with a real one. Recipe for disaster? Absolutely.
A kind man aspires to become a manga writer, but villains and evil deeds do not come easily to him, for he has little experience or natural inclination for them. Things take a surprise turn when he comes across a family who were described as idealized that are no more. He uses the real-life situation for his work.
Acting
Masaki Suda's spiral from earnest to ethically compromised is devastating
Direction
Nagai blurs creator and voyeur until you're implicated too
Writing
The screenplay weaponizes your own curiosity against you
Director
Akira Nagai
Masaki Suda
Keigo Yamashiro
Fukase
Morozumi
Mitsuki Takahata
Natsumi Kawase
Shido Nakamura
Makabe Kota
Shun Oguri
Seida Shunsuke
Akiyoshi Nakao
Makoto Omura
Yoji Matsuda
Atsushi Henmi
Tomu Miyazaki
Hayato Honjo
Takashi Okabe
Ichiro Kato
Hijiri Kojima
Yuki Yamashiro
Ai Mikami
Aya Yamashiro
Ryushin Tei
Fumiyasu Asan
Shigemitsu Ogi
Yutaka Okumura
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Fukase, who plays Morozumi, is actually the lead vocalist of J-pop band SEKAI NO OWARI—his soft-spoken menace convinced Nagai he could embody evil without theatricality.
The film interrogates Japan's 'dark tourism' phenomenon and true crime manga boom—genres where real suffering becomes consumable entertainment, implicating the audience directly.
JP
