Review: Happyend Finds Hope and Rebellion in a Monitored Tokyo
Growing pains, a familiar feeling from youth that can only describe the core of this movie. Neo Sora’s Happyend has won several awards, such as the Young Cinema Award and the Golden Hanoman Award, for a reason. Despite being set in near-future Tokyo, Happyend perfectly captures the modern anxieties of youth, of inflated political distrust, uncertain friendships and digital surveillance, without being obnoxious and in your face. The movie is centred around Yuta and Kou, Best friends who are stretched thin due to systemic control and youth rebellion. This movie keeps you hooked the whole time with brilliant storytelling and unmissable cinematography.
This movie is always humming with something electric and vibrant, with a sub-theme of raves and music. The main cast of characters are harmless forms of rebellion and self-expression. As the underground raves they attend are hidden from the constant surveillance of the government and high school.
The rave sequences are shot not as escapism but as survival, a raw, emotional outlet in a world that wants to silence them. As Kou begins to drift toward activism and Yuta clings to nostalgia, the music that once united them starts to sound different. The genre of Sci-Fi and dystopia more amplifies the overall message of Happyend rather than overshadowing it; the constant threat of earthquakes and digital surveillance blur the lines between real and fake.
Neo Sora uses genre less as a label and more as a mood, blending realism and speculation until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. The result is a film that feels both deeply human and faintly uncanny.
Beneath the veil of the coming-of-age surface story, the heavy political undertones can’t be ignored. Neo Sora uses the lens of youth to expose the quiet systems of control shaping modern Japan surveillance, nationalism, and the invisible boundaries of belonging in a homogeneous society. The school’s 24/7 monitoring system is a reflection of the states, as innocence is watched, graded and punished. We watch as Kou’s experience as a native Korean in Japan is less than ideal. With Japan's long-standing discomfort with “outsiders”, it’s revealing how discrimination seeps into everyday life under the guise of order and progress. And while Racism isn’t shouted, it's shown through Kou and Yuta’s friendship, who gets to speak, and who is silenced. The result is a subtle but accurate portrayal of how personal freedom and political identity collide in a society that prefers harmony over confrontation.
In the end, Happyend isn’t about finding neat resolutions, but about learning to live within uncertainty. Neo Sora captures the ache of growing up in a world that feels both collapsing and alive. Tokyo is loud with music, surveillance, and quiet hope. Yuta and Kou’s friendship becomes a mirror for a generation caught between comfort and never-ending privilege and protest. Through their tense connection, the film reminds us that happiness isn’t always harmony; sometimes it’s the courage to face dissonance. Happyend closes not with a crazy high, but with understanding that even in a fractured world, the act of reaching out, of listening, of staying human, might be the happiest ending we can ask for.
Written by Bella Mavridis