Ryôichi Kimizuka	...	(Director)
Ryôichi Kimizuka, Satoshi Suzuki	...	(Writer)
Kôichi Satô	...	Takumi Katsuura
Mirai Shida	...	Saori Funamura
Ryûhei Matsuda	...	Shogo Mishima
Yuriko Ishida	...	Kumiko Honjo
Kuranosuke Sasaki	...	Takaharu Umemoto
Shirô Sano	...	Ichiro Sakamoto
Kanji Tsuda	...	Koichi Inagaki
Yoshino Kimura	...	Reiko Onoue
Toshirô Yanagiba	...	Keisuke Honjo
Takahiro Azuma	...	Atsushi Sayama
Hiroshi Ôkôchi	...	Editor-in-Chief
Koji Sato	...	Reiji Funamura - Saori's Father
Satomi Nagano	...	Sumie Funamura - Saori's Mother
Satoshi Tomiura	...	Tatsuro Sonobe
Kei Sunaga	...	Inspector Shigeru Yamamoto
Takatsugu Muramatsu	...	Composer
Naoki Kayano	...	Cinematographer

Comments: This film starts with a title card message saying "In the event a minor commits a serious criminal offense police authorities may seek to shield the minor's family from excessive media scrutiny and public hostility. The protection is given to prevent members of the accused's family from taking their own lives in response to the trauma."

Some eighteen year boy is hauled off for allegedly killing two grade school children. The media is all over his house. The cops are too. One cop is assigned to protect the boy's fifteen year old sister. He made a mistake in the past and has a shaky hand. He's two days away from taking a vacation to save his marriage. Surprise, surprise. A reporter is gonna make his life hell. Stupid plot. Even stupider is when the reporter confronts the cop and tells him the fifteen year old girl should be killed as punishment for what her brother did. And then they show internet messages going around calling for the death of the little girl. Oh, and the mother kills herself in her bathroom while twenty cops sit around not protecting her. The cop protecting the little girl takes her to his shrink's house so we can get more scoop on his problems. He then goes back to the little girl's house to get her cell phone because she said she would be embarrassed if the cops read her email. Not like any of the twenty cops already there might have found it or thought it might be useful as evidence. The cop brings it back to the girl and one of her friends calls her up and says "Bummer your mom committed suicide, huh?"

This movie is so full of stupid I switched it off halfway through. People will claim that this is a side of Japanese culture westerners don't know about. I say prove it. The fact that everything else about this film is so dumb I have no reason to believe the part about the press and public calling for the death of the little girl is representative of anything but nonsense and bad writing. The parents, maybe. But the little girl? I'm not buying it.

★

Summary: A 15-year-old middle school girl is picked up at school by the police when her elder 18-year-old brother is arrested on suspicion of randomly murdering two grade school girls. She is put under the protection of a dedicated yet conflicted police detective who has orders to shield the girl from the inevitable public outrage that is to follow. Through these two protagonists’ eyes, we get a glimpse into the vulnerability, the isolation and even the resilience of the individual when up against a volatile and often intolerant world.