In Happyend, a Japanese sci-fi set in the near future, AI-generated music has taken over people’s playlists. Instead of listening to manmade art, a typical consumer allows an algorithm to detect their mood in order to vomit up digital sludge for their ears. “There are no artists anymore,” explains Neo Sora, the film’s 34-year-old writer and director. “The techno music that the kids listen to is like classical music. Clubbing and DJing is niche. It’s them rebelling.”

The world of Happyend, then, is strange yet strangely familiar. A right-wing authoritarian government is in charge; global warming poses an existential threat to humankind; a school adopts facial recognition to monitor its students 24/7. You often forget that Sora’s debut fiction feature doesn’t actually unfold in the present. “By setting it in the future, I wanted it to feel like a folk tale being told to you,” he says in September over a video call from New York. “But sometimes it feels eerily like today. I was after that critical confusion that occurs.”

Set in Tokyo, the coming-of-ager follows two teens, Kou (Yukito Hidaki) and Yuta (Hayao Kurihara), who have been best friends since an early age, bonding over their aspirations as amateur DJs. However, the pair are drifting apart: while Kou is politically minded, Yuta drifts along day by day. As the drama continues, Kou spots other students, namely Fumi (Kilala Inori), who are driven by the power of protest, at one point staging an anti-racism sit-in in their headmaster’s office. Is the film trying to encourage young viewers to become activists?

Sora shakes his head, insisting he wasn’t “intending for any change within society”. He describes the film as encapsulating an emotion he felt in his early twenties. “It’s that feeling of losing or not talking to your friends due to perceived political differences. It’s how nostalgic you and your friends are when hanging out, but simultaneously knowing you can’t go back to those days.” He gives it more thought. “When it reaches people who do protest, it makes them feel more seen, especially in Japan, where protesting is not that common.”

When Sora was the age of Kou and Yuta, he lived in New York, where he was raised by his parents. (His father was the late Oscar-winning film composer Ryuichi Sakamoto; Sora directed the 2023 documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus.) “In places like America, there are clear, material manifestations of social realities. But in Japan, there’s a diffuse, almost intangible fear. In the film, I use the metaphor of an earthquake that’s about to come. The repressed trauma is specific to this Japanese atmosphere.” He also compares the activism styles. “A lot of the time, protests in Japan are within the bounds of the law, which can be quite frustrating.”

Sora tells me that transposing the story to Japan allowed him to explore the country’s history with colonialism. As Kou is Korean, he’s discriminated against at school, as are the other Zainichi Koreans around him. When Kou and Yuta vandalise a teacher’s car, it’s only Kou who’s directly accused of the crime. Sora’s prediction for the future, then, is that racism will continue to thrive. However, none of it’s spelt out in the movie. “It depends on how much understanding of Japanese colonial history you know, because unfortunately not much of it is taught to people. It strikes a nerve for some Japanese audiences who are unfortunately xenophobic.” He laughs. “Some audience members come away from the film being like, ‘I felt most like the [racist] principal.’ I’m like, ‘I’m glad you can admit that!’”

In the West, a lot of viewers see the issues that are presented in the film as separate issues – surveillance, xenophobia – but don’t quite connect them all through the long arc of colonialism, and how that persists today

In 1923, an earthquake in Japan led to the mass murder of around 6,000 Koreans after false rumours spread. In Happyend, an earthquake allows the authorities to apply stricter measures on citizens; for some classes, the Korean students are instructed to leave the room. Sora notes, “In the West, a lot of viewers see the issues that are presented in the film as separate issues – surveillance, xenophobia, all these things – but don’t quite connect them all through the long arc of colonialism, and how that persists today.”

Sora spent nearly a decade rewriting the script. In the first draft, he referenced quotes from Sanseitō, which was “at the time a fringe far-right party”. The director says, “The party leader, Sohei Kamiya, who is utterly stupid and engages in historical revisionism, had a speech in 2017 or 2018 where he said Japan never invaded Asia because there were no countries in Asia at the time. It was so ridiculous, I used parts for this fictional speech in the film. But this past election cycle, this far-right party gained 14 seats in government from one seat, and he’s fully in government.” With dismay, Sora explains that Kamiya is gaining popularity for his “Japan-first” sentiments. “Things are happening much faster than I was predicting. It’s very unfortunate.”

However, Happyend is utterly delightful, whether or not you’re a Kou or Yuta on the scale of deciphering political subtext. Sora, a natural director, has a knack for pacing and placing the camera in the right spot for maximising dramatic and comedic potential: conversations unspool while revealing a third party in the corner of the frame, eavesdropping; visual gags include a car placed sideways, a meowing cat app, and a shopkeeper who DJs like she’s a classically trained cellist. Sora names Ernst Lubitsch, the king of screwball comedy, as a specific inspiration. “I watched Design for Living for the structure and compositions. It’s a love-triangle film, and Happyend is a love-triangle film but with friendship.”

I tell Sora that me and my friend saw the marketing and went into Happyend expecting a light sci-fi romcom. After the screening, all we talked about was how the film tackled the tension between its Korean and Japanese characters. “The foreground of the film for me isn’t actually the theme of colonialism,” he counters. “It’s the emotion of having lost a friend, or moving away from friends that you thought were rock solid. But in order to make Ko’s motivations convincing, we needed the story about society and politics to be convincing as well.”

If Sora didn’t plan on encouraging young viewers to take up political activism, could Happyend have a different effect, like forcing audience members to question if they can remain friends with someone whose politics they despise? “I was hoping the film would inspire someone to call a friend they hadn’t talked to in a while,” he says. “Or maybe they could go see the film together.”

That’s a lot nicer than my suggestion, I say.

“Yeah, I’m suggesting the opposite,” says Sora. “When I finish watching the film, it makes me miss the friends I haven’t spoken to in a long time. It gives me a reflexive urge to try to reconnect.”

Happyend is out in UK cinemas on September 19