Director Yuki Tanada confirms herself as one of Japan’s most talented filmmakers with this emotionally-engaging drama and bold expression of the inner lives, hardships and cooped-up feelings of individuals in modern day Japan.

Faced with the growing pressure of bearing a child for her immature husband, lonely housewife Satomi (Tomoko Tabata) regularly seeks escape through anime comic romances. It’s whilst attending an anime convention - where she dresses up as her favorite character, Anzu - that Satomi spots handsome high-school student Takumi (Kento Nagayama) and decides he’s the spitting image of Muramasa, Anzu’s knight in shining armour. But when the costume play turns to foreplay, Satomi embarks on an illicit affair with the younger man and when the evidence of their relationship is leaked it will change their lives forever. Meanwhile, Takumi’s best friend Ryota struggles living with his senile grandmother in a rundown housing development after his mother abandoned the two of them for a new boyfriend.

Fearless in its examination of hot-button topics like transgressive sex and cyber-age voyeurism, this is a touching, downbeat take on domestic entrapment, teenage angst and suburban ennui in contemporary Japan.

Followed by a Q&A with director Yuki Tanada.

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