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.

Despite the negative reviews and some understandable critisism this movie truly is worth watching.

(Plot without any spoilers):

It tells a story of 12 teens meeting up in an abandoned hospital, all with the same plan of ending their lives. Before they are able to do so they are faced with a problem. Instead of there being 12 of them, theres 13, and one of the teens is already dead. Deciding they should figure out how this happened before going on with their plan, the mystery begins.

The mystery itself is interesting and is also the main plot of the movie. Its fun to play detective and try to figure out and discover what happened.

The acting and characters were great. Each individual character was unique and had their own reason of wanting to end their life, which was extremely interesting to learn about. Theres also quite a few great actresses: (Hana Sugisaki: Bleach, Blade of the Immortal...) and actors: (Mackenyu: recent One Piece live action..)

Most of the negative reviews talk about the movie not making much sense, which if you go full Gordon Ramsay mode might be true to some extent. For some people this might be a reason to not watch this movie, but for those able to ignore small details it definitely is worth watching despite the heavy subject!

Big suprisse,good movie,not boring,has twist,interesting. everything that good movie should have !

I immediately wanted to watch this after knowing the cast. And I was not disappointed in the acting department of the movie. I've seen almost every actor in this movie in really different roles and I was immensely impressed by their acting here. Although, I'm not sure if people who are unfamiliar with the cast will enjoy it as much as I did.

The characters' personalities were very eccentric as most Japanese teens in dark disturbing movies are (which actually makes me wonder: are there really Japanese teens with these dramatic and over-the-top reactions and principles or is this just a reflection of anime/manga characters?). However, each character's experiences are a great representation of the different reasons for suicide. That was also one of the best parts of the story: how characters have conflicting reasons on why they want to end their life.

The ending, for me, was great but could have been better. However, the actors made it convincing enough for me to accept it.

I think the movie was overall beautifully shot although I did feel that they achieved it with struggles. In terms of the pace, it's slow as it should be (maybe a bit too slow in the beginning but it did add some tension). It also felt a little bit incomplete.

In summary: good points - fair representation of suicidal teens, cinematography, acting not so good points - it's hard to take the situation seriously if you're not familiar with this kind of genre of japanese film (this hardly counts as a con) bad points - it's not the greatest film but it's on its way to be if they pushed harder (specifically on the ending)

Twelve teens go into an abandoned hospital to fulfill a suicide pact but on arrival, they find the body of a boy and set out to find out his circumstances.

Great representation of dark, moody teens. Each with their own stories and reasons for being where they are, they are unique and keep you interested.

I liked it. It was a bit slow starting out but it is well acted and written. Not a bad watch.