Suicide Club 2001

Over six days, the film threads a chilling sequence of events that begins with a televised concert by a fictional pop group, Dessert, who open and close the movie with their performance of a J-Pop track called “Mail Me.” The mystery unfolds through the eyes of a trio of detectives, Detective Kuroda Ryo Ishibashi, Detective Shibusawa Masatoshi Nagase, and Detective Murata Akaji Maro, whose investigation is triggered by a troubling link between suicides and a website that displays numbers as red and white circles. They are drawn into a web of tragedy that stretches across Tokyo and beyond, as another voice in the mix arrives in the form of the hacker Kiyoko Yôko Kamon, who begins to reveal how the deaths may be connected to a coordinated online phenomenon.

On May 27, a wave of despair starts in Tokyo: 54 teenage schoolgirls die by mass suicide on a train, followed by two nurses who jump to their deaths in a hospital. Strips of skin are found at both sites, matching skin removed from the bodies, suggesting a ritualistic and systematic pattern behind the killings. The investigators are alerted to a link through Kiyoko, who sends a tip that hints at a broader, sinister network. The film then pivots to a different scene as the city’s attention shifts toward a new target: a high school where, on May 28, a group of students leaps from a rooftop during lunch, triggering a citywide manhunt for a rumored “Suicide Club.”

By May 29, the crisis has spiraled to national proportions, with copycat acts spreading across Japan. Among the chaos, Mitsuko, a young woman on her way home, becomes entwined in the narrative when her boyfriend Masa dies after leaping from a roof. Mitsuko is brought to the police station for questioning, where she is subjected to a strip search and a forensic discovery reveals a butterfly tattoo on her skin. The investigation deepens as the detectives track the expanding pattern, while the boy who warned of the 7:30 suicide on May 30 calls Detective Kuroda to caution him about an impending catastrophe at the same platform, leading to a tense stake-out. Yet, that anticipated mass suicide does not occur, and the city continues to lose people to smaller, more intimate fatal acts, including the destruction of Kuroda’s own family. In a state of mounting despair, Kuroda receives another ominous call and, in a moment of despair, shoots himself.

The story shifts to a bleak underground world where Kiyoko is captured by Genesis, a force led by a man who calls himself Genesis and who resides in a secret subterranean bowling alley with four glam-rock cohorts. During the capture, Genesis performs a song while a young girl, kept in a white sack, is brutally raped and killed in front of them. The brutality is stark, and Kiyoko manages to email the authorities with crucial information about Genesis. By May 31, the police arrest Genesis, and it is assumed that the leader of the “Suicide Club” has been caught, though the true scope of the network remains unclear.

On June 1, Mitsuko returns to her boyfriend’s home to retrieve a helmet and notices Dessert’s posters on the wall, recognizing a familiar pattern on the fingers of the group that spells out the word “suicide” on a telephone keypad. The official line is that there is no “Suicide Club,” but Mitsuko is drawn deeper into the mystery when the posters and the imagery begin to intersect with her own life. A secret concert invitation arrives, and on June 2 Mitsuko slips backstage, where she is ushered into a room filled with children who ask her questions. The children bring her to a hidden room where a skin strip from Mitsuko’s tattoo is shaved away, the strip corresponding to the butterfly tattoo that had previously been noted by the police.

A new skin roll makes its way back to the authorities, and Detective Shibusawa recognizes the strip as Mitsuko’s tattoo. That evening, Shibusawa spots Mitsuko at a train station and reaches out to hold her hand, but she recoils and stares back at him as the train pulls away. The film’s closing credits roll over the final moments: Dessert announces their disbandment and expresses gratitude to their fans before performing their last piece, “Live as You Please,” leaving lingering questions about the nature of desire, anonymity, and the modern culture of self-destruction.

This story unfolds through a somber, observational lens that refuses to sensationalize its events, instead presenting a mounting sense of unease as the lines between media, fans, and real-life tragedy blur. The film uses its six-day arc to build a creeping atmosphere of inevitability, punctuated by intimate moments—Mitsuko’s quiet fear, Kiyoko’s determined cut to the heart of the machine, and the detectives’ increasingly personal stakes—until the last scene, where the performative world of Dessert intersects with a grim reality that cannot be untangled.

Notes on cast appearances:

• Detective Kuroda is portrayed by [Ryo Ishibashi], a link to his page is included at his first mention.

• Detective Shibusawa is portrayed by [Masatoshi Nagase], linked at his first mention.

• Detective Murata is portrayed by [Akaji Maro], linked at his first mention.

• Kiyoko, the hacker who helps initiate the investigation, is played by [Yôko Kamon], linked at her first mention.

• Mitsuko’s character is portrayed by [Sayoko Hagiwara], linked at her first mention.

• Genesis, the figure at the center of the underground group, is portrayed by [ROLLY], linked at his first mention.

• One of Genesis’ gang members appears as [Masato Tsujioka], linked at his first mention.