This was a roller coaster through the sickness of the human mind and back up to blue skies. I watched this after suicide club (that in my opinion was very average to not so good) and was amazed. The movie did not even need the Suicide Circle background. The symbolisms were nicely presented and the metaphors were very tight to the storyline. The atmosphere is heavy dramatic and suits the movie's concept fantastically. While watching you feel like you are passing from reality to fantasy and back again up to the point you don't know whats real anymore. We have to thank the very well presented characters for this (just enough info but not too much). This was a very very good movie. Long but good!

This movie was quite entertaining, but I have got one very major complain about this movie. This movie did not really show how the father was bad to his daughters. The father just cared about his work, so when the daughter, Noriko and her sister ran away, did not bother him much. That showed how cruel Noriko's father is. The father even asked his wife to help him do his work, so you can see how obsessed the father is at work. As mentioned towards the end of the show, Noriko's father may even hit her if she asked him something. However, the character development for Noriko's father to see how distant he is towards his daughter could have been made much better like the movie "Click". I thought this movie should also focus more on the "Problem" rather than just the "Solution".Click really shows that when when the main character was obsessed with his work, and when his kids ask him a question, he would scold them and shout at them loudly. The movie also shows how obsessed the main character was obsessed with his work(when he got back home he just did and did his work without even caring about the kids). So you can see how distant their relationship is and feel touch for the characters. This movie did not really manage to make me feel touch because they focused too much on the solution rather than the problem. I did not really feel that the relationship of the daughter and father was very far unlike the movie CLICK. The first half an hour of this movie could have used to build up development instead of long boring dialogs. This movie still managed to be interesting though, it managed to be touching at times, especially when they are trying to solve the problem by doing some 'acting'. This movie is unique and entertaining. It is fun to watch due to its rather good storyline though poor character development. Furthermore, the ending pratically spoiled the entire film. The ending was extremely aggravating and terrible. I thought the whole problem was solved. A lot of effort was put in to solve the problem. What wrong with Noriko's sister? Why did she do something so stupid? Why did she run away? This ending is just horrible and extremely aggravating. This film somehow did not impact me as much as suicide club. I preferred suicide club to this film. Though this film was still good because it was very very entertaining though not convincing enough for me. Score: 7/10

Sion Sono follows up Suicide Club/Suicide Circle with this, a telling of the story from a different perspective that, Lost-like, answers some questions from the previous movie while exchanging even more. This movie, however, is more character based, and involves the issue of role-playing in society--rather than being merely a commentary on pop culture, it's a discussion of the nature of being "connected to oneself" or, really, being who you are meant to be, not who society wants you to be or even what you were born into being.A great way in which Sono pulls this off is to have multiple voice-over narrators engage in a confessional storytelling mode. Unfortunately for international viewers, said voice-over often is delivered over dialog of the movie as well, and the sub-titles can tend to fall behind in many cases, resulting in it being difficult from time to time to tell what all is being said. Can't fault the intentions, but this movie is probably not nearly quite the experience it would be in its native language.It also commits the cardinal sin of an unjustified playlength. This movie ran about 2 1/2 hours long, but ten minutes could have been shaved off of the end. Sono attempted to justify it with a repeated motif of running away, this time with Yuka, the younger sister, but the movie had a much stronger ending on the "Let's start over" moment. Due to the introspective nature of the movie, however, it makes sense that sometimes the best ending doesn't necessarily end the idea. It's just that this is one of those movies that fades out tantalizingly several times before finally actually ending, and that gets frustrating to watch some times.--PolarisDiB

Wow. I must say, of all the films out there, this one has a concept that has never been done before.When this film was released, most of its recognition stemmed from it being the director's follow-up to his cult favorite "Suicide Club" (2002). In fact, that is what sparked my interest, as I am a die-hard fan of "Suicide Club". However, after viewing this film, I have to definitely recommend not going in and expecting a sequel. This film takes place in the same universe, and its story may clear up a bit of the whys in "Suicide Club", but it has a different story completely. Different characters, different timeframe, different genre, everything, but standalone film or sequel - this is one of the best films I've seen.We pick up the story a bit of time before the events of "Suicide Club" (6 months prior to be exact). A 17 year old girl named Noriko Shimabara lives with her father Tetsu, her mother Taeko, and her sister Yuka. Utterly bored with life, she spends hours contacting various teenage girls through the website "haikyo.com" (present in the first film). Aching to leave home and meet those like her, Noriko packs her bags and runs off to Tokyo. The very next morning, she meets Kumiko - the founder of the website haikyo. But she is immediately swept into a bizarre game of acting as part of a family and getting paid for it. Eventually, she contacts her sister Yuka, who runs off to be with her sister. Their mother commits suicide, and 6 months later their father hears about a suicide cult in Tokyo that caused 54 girls to jump in front of a train. Tetsu has a feeling that Noriko is involved, so he starts a very long journey to get his daughters back. However, by the time he reaches them, 2 years have passed, and they have become completely detached from reality and from themselves.This is where the movie reaches its climax, and goes into the bizarre and gruesome territory that anyone familiar with the first film would be expecting. But this is NOT a horror movie in any sense of the word. It's almost pure drama. Even though it has a seemingly complicated plot, at heart it is simply a story about a girl's journey to her own soul and to the heart of life. And what a dark journey it is.The ending is a bit like the first one's ending, with a sense of accomplishment. It is quite the uplifting ending for an otherwise depressing film. But it gives no easy answers. I'll be looking forward to the third one, where the events from this film and the last film are finally tied up.The symbolism and messages in this film are incredible, and the plot was perfectly crafted to convey them all. I don't see how anybody could NOT like this movie. It is the perfect embodiment of all human emotion.10/10