The Akihabara massacre will be the epicentre around which the lives of the characters in this raw, postmodern Japanese urban album revolve, showing that the limits of the world have become—ever more clearly—the boundary that separates the beauty of living on the one hand, and the descent into sick alienation to fulfil social expectations such as earning more money or becoming famous on the other.

The facts can be pointed out without judgement: Misa wants to be an idol and lost her mother in the massacre, but instead of fleeing the neighbourhood, she works hard giving massages for 1,900 yen and seven more coins plus a couple of slaps. She cannot stand the father she lives with because, although we only find out at the end, he used to beat her mother and she blames him for her death.

Rie is the typical student who sweats MP4, and without being psychic, she probably listens to Banvox because of the magnificent and refreshing soundtrack for such a serious topic as the consequences of the Akihabara victims. Rie can’t even talk to her father because she’s so immersed in her own world, and things get worse when she gets pregnant and calls her father, a man named Takuya, who instead of asking ‘what are we going to do’ (plural), abandons her by saying ‘what are you going to do’. In fact, Rie’s father, Yamamoto, happens to be passing through the neighbourhood where the massacre took place (this happened eight years ago) and when he sees Misa and her friends dancing like idols in front of a small audience, he decides to follow her, perhaps because she reminds him of his own daughter Rie with her dyed hair. And then we have the almost aphasic Ken Ohashi, a delivery man who, as soon as he gets home, has to face his uncertainty because his mother has not paid the rent for months and, to make matters worse, her creditors are looking for her – although fortunately she disappears for a while – and they beat Ken up to make him pay for her debts.

In his spare time, he has made a couple of recordings to imagine (and then, not only that) using the phone booth to threaten to call the police headquarters, just when he is desperate because his mother has disappeared again and Mizoguchi from Kaino Real Estate is insisting that he vacate his home. In general, there is domestic violence from the daughters towards their father, and there are opportunists who will try to lure Misa into prostitution or use her, even though her co-worker Takahashi warned her—albeit with insinuations—not to risk becoming a model and seeking fame. Oh well, no one learns from the mistakes of others.