HAPPYEND Blu-ray

HAPPYEND places a friendship under pressure in a near-future Japanese city where daily life is changing faster than its young inhabitants can understand. Childhood best friends Yuta and Kou spend their days making music and getting into trouble with their usual circle. As graduation approaches, they assume that the happiness of being together will simply continue.

One night, the group slips into school and Yuta proposes an outrageous prank. Kou hesitates, but Yuta is delighted by the idea. When the principal discovers what they have done, his anger leads to the installation of an AI surveillance system that watches students around the clock. What began as mischief becomes the turning point in how the two friends see their school and the society around them.

Kou starts confronting long-accumulated doubts about his identity and place in that society. Yuta would rather keep enjoying life with his friends as before. Their different responses gradually strain a relationship both had taken for granted. Against a changing social landscape, the film explores how friendship can feel permanent even as the people within it move in different directions.

Written and directed by Neo Sora, this debut narrative feature stars Hayato Kurihara and Yukito Hidaka alongside a young ensemble, with Shiro Sano playing the principal. Ambient sound and techno music help shape its portrait of adolescence and an unsettling, recognisably possible future.

This region-free Blu-ray presents the 113-minute film with Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound, Japanese subtitles and a Japanese audio-description track. A theatrical trailer is also included.