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A wounded young woman in search of a protector and a nihilistic serial killer fight for the meaning of existence in Daiki Tanaka’s dark romantic drama, Parallel. Taking different paths out of a sense of “unworthiness” each look for ways out of this “rotten world” but find themselves mirroring the magical girl anime that inspires the killer’s desire for escape in discovering an uncomfortable sense of mutual salvation in the histories of their shared trauma.
Panning over a scene of scattered cosmetics and tangled wigs, the camera first lights on the sight of a bearded man gently stroking coloured hair before putting on lipstick in the mirror. We then transition to a scene of violence as a young girl is brutally beaten by her parents who later lock her inside a cupboard only for the cross-dressing man to turn up and kill them with a knife. The man spots the lock on the door and rescues the girl, giving his name as Shinji and asking in a soft voice if the girl, Mai, thinks he is beautiful. Mai nods tearfully, evidently viewing the killer as her saviour. Flashing forward a decade or so, Mai is a 20-year-old woman still haunted by her childhood trauma and captivated by reports of the “Cosplay Killer” who dismembers his victims and places lights inside to make them glow. The Cosplay Killer uploads photos of Shinji along with videos of his kills though it seems that Shinji was killed by police at the scene of Mai’s parents’ murder so the current killer is thought to be a copycat.
That turns out to be true and not. A very emo, nihilistic young man, Mikio is a manga artist working on a magical girl series in which humanoid robots developed as anthropomorphic weapons develop a sense of humanity after becoming “broken” through fighting an earlier iteration of themselves inspired by Shinji. Something similar happens to Mikio on encountering Mai. A sociopath with no sense of morality, he is confused by his innate connection with the wounded young woman apparently the only person he would not like to kill, which makes him think perhaps he should kill her.
Meanwhile, he secretly plots with a collection of similarly disaffected young men fed up with being made to feel inferior by this “rotten” world full of “trash humans” who can’t recognise people from machines. The present source of their ire is TV pundit Okudera who is a frequent commenter on the Cosplay Killer later going on a long rant about how anime should be banned for corrupting the minds of the youth seeing as they never had this kind of thing in their day. Backstage meanwhile he makes a point of humiliating his assistant, forcing him to get down on his knees and apologise for being “worthless” insistent that he should be grateful Okudera is training him so thoroughly when the rest of the world is so cold.
Mai too just wants to feel “worthy”, laughing about a rubbish date with her friend Kana in which a dating app hook up earnestly declared his love. Kana not unfairly thinks that might have been a little creepy but even though she doesn’t plan to see the man again Mai enjoyed the attention in the sense that in the moment she needed to feel desirable. That might be why she seems to be making a living through compensated dating, making the middle-aged man she hangs out with wear a wig to better resemble Shinji while he somewhat uncomfortably echoes the words of her abuser in making her say “I love you, Daddy” over a hug to end the session. He offers her more money for a pair of her used panties, but at present Mai thinks that’s a step too far.
Equally drawn to Mikio, Mai finds herself bonding with the “creepy” young man the pair of them baring their literal scars and then symbolically giving each other new ones with the aid of a box cutter. Mikio is obsessed with the idea of transformation but originally rejects his attraction to Mai because would it tie him to this rotten world rather than the better anime one his killing sprees allow him to escape into, his mangaka mentor later asking him why he can’t use love to transform himself and find new meaning, a kind of Earthly magic, in human connection but all of this is perhaps forgetting that Mikio is a man who stalks, kills, and dismembers his prey later explaining that unlike Mai no one came to save him from the abuse he too suffered and this was the way he freed himself. His concept of revolution has an extremely dark edge reminiscent of that pursued by angry, embittered young men radicalised by their sense of inferiority and so the otherwise touching affirmation from Mai that he has shown her the magical moment everything can change because they can create their own meaning in life has an unavoidable air of discomfort. A mix of slasher horror and emo teen romance, Tanaka’s giallo-esque neon-lit journey through a world of trauma and abuse allows its “broken robot” to find both peace and purpose but equally to avoid responsibility for his heinous violence.
PARALLEL streamed as part of Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival 2021.
Windows on Worlds 