Jûni-nin no shinitai kodomo-tachi

A group of teenagers meets up in an abandoned hospital, when they encounter a mystery. A few of them wants to investigate the mystery, while others want to proceed with their original plan.

As the title suggests, it is inspired by the American movie 12 Angry Men. There are similarities, like the large amount of dialogue, but the plot is completely different. The Japanese movie is also different in that the characters use more than one room, and may move around inside and outside the hospital, creating more visual variation.

While the characters are fundamentally built upon clichés, there is an effort to make them come alive. Many of them are interesting in themselves, but the unique point is their multi-way interactions. How each one plays out differently against various other participants, and interjects into the heated group discussions.

It is hard to point out any one as the protagonist, because many of them makes active contributions, and are written like they are the hero, at least in their own mind. This makes it one of the most democratic movies. It can't be said that exactly everyone is a protagonist of course, because there would not be room to give everyone the exact same level of activity, and it would not feel realistic either.

The acting is generally good, with a few actors standing out. The most powerful character might be Anri, played by the very experienced actress Sugisaki Hana (e.g. Played Rukia in the Bleach live action movie). Some of the others were relative beginners at the time.

The suicide plot line is worthy of a movie in itself, and the junction with the orthogonal mystery plot line creates a field of complexity. The mystery even follows all the ten commandments of Ronald Knox. Enough clues are presented so that it in theory would be possible to guess the solution, or parts of it. With so much going on, this is difficult in practice, and I almost wish that it would have been just a little bit less complicated, to give us more of a chance. Still, it is one of the most reasonable and logically solvable mysteries.

To anyone looking for a challenge, I dare you to solve it. It would be allowed to rewatch the movie any number of times up to some point to look for clues. In that case, you should at the very most watch until the time when they close the door to the meeting room, before making your judgement and watching the end.

The story is a bit dark and heavy, so it is best to watch when in the right mood, and when not too tired to concentrate on the details.