Love & Pop is a live-action film directed by Hideaki Anno after his work on Neon Genesis Evangelion. It carries the same psychological monologues exploring people’s loneliness and lack of purpose in late 1990s Japan. This time, the protagonist is a high school girl named Hiromi, and sadly, there’s little evidence of Anno’s tokusatsu influences here—unless you count the upskirting shots, which I don’t. If you enjoyed the live-action scenes at the end of The End of Evangelion, you’ll probably like this film too, as did I. Score: 7/10.
The Subject Matter and Setting
The film revolves around enjou-kousai (compensated dating)— the practice of paying a few thousand or more yen to a girl to pretend to be your girlfriend for a few hours. This may or may not involve sexual services. The setting is late 1990s Tokyo, Japan. Think of it as Japanese “Sugar Daddy services”.. man compensated dating sounds so much less cringe to write.
The movie is technically an adaptation of an untranslated novel, Topaz II by Ryu Murakami whose books are often found for sale at European book stores, alongside the books of an unrelated Japanese novelist with the same family name, from the blurbs it sounds his books are written in a way that appeal to western sensibilities as opposed to otaku-ish ones basically delving into the darker sides of Japanese society, portraying Japan’s urban nightlife and exploitation because meaningless “true” crime is apparently the only thing which excites normal-fags in their dull lives, in contrast to more otaku-oriented narratives which are more optimistic and hopeful though not any less complex or compelling, in fact quite the opposite. In any case, this is a very unfaithful adaptation of the book, so at the end of it, like at the bottom of 90s Anno’s heart or Pandora’s box, there is hope.
Visuals and Direction
The runtime is almost two hours, but I enjoy long films, and the grainy, glazed-over look of the 1990s digital cameras kept me engaged, it reminded me of home films and photos that I and mostly my parents used to shoot on digital cameras and flip-phones. Anno experiments with unusual angles and first-person perspectives, though thankfully the camera isn’t shaky at all. To achieve these distinctive shots (including occasional upskirting), Anno used handheld camcorders like the Sony VX1000.
One of my friends, Fahrenheit, felt the video quality was poor for a 1990s film, but I thought it enhanced the washed out, monolithic atmosphere of the city. It made Tokyo feel habitated yet not lived-in—a concrete jungle which is really just a husk teeming with the lonely masses, engaging in lurid stories while not even knowing what their family members, are really like. The subdued colour palette adds to this feeling, as though Hiromi’s story is just one of many occurring in parallel. No of course, it doesn’t, I don’t believe in this horoscope-level superstitions about colour theory in film. Films were probably better and more majestic and grand when they were black and white anyway, as the last episode of GunBuster proves.
Story and Themes
The film’s story unfolds over one day in Shinjuku, Tokyo—Hiromi’s first day engaging in compensated dating. The day begins with her and her friends shopping and meeting various weird and sometimes weirdly preachy customers (no doubt espousing the director’s views on compensated dating, although honestly, is being an actress really that different than compensated dating? Anno may be accusing hypocritical men who lust for young women’s bodies and yell at tell them to be chaste, study, go to a good college and have a family and kids, perhaps the movie’s production itself, is predicated on the attraction that these actresses exude and the audience feels and yet no one with a heart would reject cinema as a whole or say that there should be no more beautiful actresses in film, certainly the director does not agree with that, revealing that perhaps it’s not so shrimple after all). The movie ends with the conclusion of Hiromi’s solo quest to acquire a topaz ring before a one-day sale ends— essentially the reason why she engaged in compensated dating in the first place was because she wanted to have something special like her friends who all had something going on with their lives.
[Aside: I wonder how women who today engage in what amounts to, what is essentially digital compensated dating, through platforms like OnlyFans, would say about this relic from a then-futuristic era. Would they find it condescending (not wanting to be pitited), relatable, annoying or something else? I’d like to know.]
Hiromi’s friends are introduced at the start via a monologue and montage, but after disappearing midway, (this is a Hiromi-centric film) they only reappear during the credits scene. Here, they happily prance through an artificial water canal (think of the drained canal from GTA V but with still a puddle-deep trickle of water) as cheerful 1990s J-pop with female vocals plays in the background. The film’s more engaging moments involve the girls interacting with creepy, lonely men who shamelessly part with their money to spend time with them. As the day progresses, the men get stranger, more brazen and desperate and less sympathetic.
Leftover thoughts
My friend Biogundam observed, that the film isn’t preachy towards the girls. The only people who reprimand them for their actions are the hypocritical men paying for their company. Hiromi comes across as innocent and vulnerable, but the film doesn’t seem to excuse her behaviour either. As for the men, they’re fascinating to watch—like a live-action version of the “Portrait of an Otaku” scenes in Otaku no Video but with even less sympathetic because they seem more dangerous than pathetic.
There’s a beach episode that you can watch if you want to see the girls in swimming suits. The Making Of documentary claims that this was supposed to be the real ending of the film but the film got spoiled and so it’s just included as an extra. I think it would have been silly to add this. Come to think of it the girls do go shopping for swimming suits in the film, so it may not be a total lie but then I can feel Anno’s nonchalant smile at having fooled another one.
There’s a beach episode that you can watch if you want to see the girls in swimming suits. The Making Of documentary claims that this was supposed to be the real ending of the film but the film got spoiled and so it’s just included as an extra. I think it would have been silly to add this. Come to think of it the girls do go shopping for swimming suits in the film, so it may not be a total lie but then I can feel Anno’s nonchalant smile at having fooled another one.
Apparently a JAV director/actor fren of Anno was present on set, making a cameo in The Making Of Love & Pop documentary, but maybe that explains the first person POV camera angles. I think Anno in turn helped this JAV director film his own film Kantoku-Shikkaku (Disqualified as a director, a play on Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human title, Ningen-Shikaku obv) but that’s another story.
There’s a little bit of bad CGI at the end of L&P, the bit where Hiromi and the stuff in her bedroom starts to float around the room. Hiromi looks really CGI there.
Personal Experience
I first watched Love & Pop on my Galaxy S3 (rest in peace) via a now-deleted YouTube video. Oddly, the small mobile screen felt closer to a cinematic experience than a computer monitor, perhaps due to the intimacy of watching in the dark, holding the screen in my hand. Nostalgia undoubtedly colours this memory—I’ve consumed other grand works, like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, in similar settings.
Final Thoughts on the Film and Enjou-kousai in Media
The only other media I’ve encountered on enjou-kousai is the manga Rental Girlfriend, which I hate-read before eventually dropping. Its blend of rom-com tropes and compensated dating is bizarre—the protagonist literally pays his “love interest” to spend time with him, undermining any genuine romance. Yet the continued presence of enjou-kousai in media decades after Love & Pop suggests that the issues facing young people remain unresolved, defying simple solutions like Anno’s dad-like tough-talk critique.
Mobile phones were apparently not that common in the 90s, Hiromi and the girls have to use a phone they borrowed to use the compensated dating voicemail service, in Rental Girlfriend there’s an app which the “heroine” uses, anyway I kind of found it funny that the first thing a bunch of girls want to do when they get their hands on a mobile phone is to sell themselves for money to buy clothes and a piece of expensive jewellery. Does that say something about how we live in a society or is it that men and women have always been the same?
The film’s core message is simple: value yourself for the sake of those who value you. That’s sound advice for most ordinary people, who sometimes doubt themselves, but have people that care about them. As Parz notes, films are better suited to evoking a feeling than delving into intricate details—though this simplicity can make them less compelling compared to TV series.
Despite its flaws, Love & Pop stands out for its experimental direction and moody atmosphere. It’s a fascinating exploration of youth, consumerism, and loneliness in late 1990s Tokyo, all filtered through Anno’s distinctive lens.
Published: Tuesday, Sep 21, 2021. Edited: 25/11/2024.
