Mind Game 2005

Nishi Rintarou Nishi is a 20-year-old NEET from Osaka who dreams of drawing his own comic book someday. One evening, a chance subway encounter with his childhood crush, Myon, pulls him into a world he never expected. She brings him to her family’s yakitori restaurant, where he meets her father, her elder sister Yan, and her fiancé Ryo. The calm of this reunion is shattered when Atsu, a loud and dangerous yakuza, and a senior member referred to as Aniki, burst in searching for Myon’s father, who supposedly betrayed Atsu by seducing and stealing his girlfriend.

Atsu menaces Myon with a gun, and Ryo steps in to protect her, only to be knocked unconscious. Atsu’s violence escalates as he attempts to rape Myon, who cries out for Nishi. In a brutal moment, Atsu turns his pistol on Nishi, pressing it against his body and firing when Nishi musters a desperate, defiant threat. The shot kills him instantly, and the senior yakuza, angered by Atsu’s recklessness, shoots Atsu dead in turn. The violence marks a turning point for Nishi, who is then condemned to a strange limbo where he is forced to relive his own death again and again.

In this strange purgatory, Kami-sama—a being whose form shifts with every moment—appears. Kami-sama taunts Nishi, saying he created him for his own amusement, before steering him toward a red portal that would swallow him. Yet Nishi’s fierce will to live prevails; he charges toward a blue portal instead and somehow escapes. Back in the moment just before Atsu’s gunfire, Nishi makes a bold, almost surreal intervention. He wrests the weapon from Atsu using his buttocks and fatally shoots the aggressor. Yan, Myon, and the still-unconscious Ryo sprint away in the car, with the yakuza in hot pursuit, threatening to frame them for armed robbery and murder.

The chase leads to a dead-end on a bridge, where the boss commands his men to close in. Nishi, refusing to surrender, drives the car off the bridge and into the vast mouth of a whale. Inside its belly, they discover a strange, suspended world—a home built by an elderly former yakuza who has lived there for more than thirty years. He reveals an entire life inside the whale’s interior sea, showing them a remarkable lifelike apartment and a new rhythm of existence. When every escape attempt fails, the group reluctantly adapts to life within the whale. Yan pursues dancing and art, Myon rediscovers swimming—a dream she had abandoned after puberty—and Nishi continues to write and draw manga, with him and Myon growing emotionally intimate.

As the interior water begins to rise, the old man explains that the whale is likely dying. The group conceives a plan to escape by fashioning a motorboat from spare parts and fuel taken from the car that brought them here. They work with patient determination, rebuilding time and hope in tandem. The day before the World Cup’s final match, the whale surfaces and returns them to Osaka, where they finally succeed in breaking free.

The escape sequence lifts them into the air, and the film returns to the very first scene—Myon fleeing the yakuza on the subway platform. This time, however, her leg slips free from the closing train door and the pursuing yakuza are left behind on the platform. What follows is a long montage that mirrors the opening credits, weaving the histories of each character into a broader tapestry. The closing text proclaims, This Story Has Never Ended, leaving viewers with a sense of endless narrative possibilities as the credits roll.

• The tale blends danger, fate, and resilience with a dreamlike surrealism, tracing how a single act of courage can fracture a doomed loop and open a doorway to a second chance.

• Through Nishi’s persistence, Yan’s artistry, Myon’s rediscovered self, and the old man’s strange wisdom, the group learns to redefine what it means to survive, even when the world seems to collapse around them.

• The film’s recurring motifs—red and blue portals, the whale as a sanctuary, and the ongoing pursuit by forces that seek to define their lives—underscore a central idea: identity can be renegotiated, and a story can bend toward renewal even after the darkest moments.