Love & Pop
ラブ&ポップ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Four schoolgirls and one day of enjo kōsai in Shibuya — Anno's digital-video anatomy of the compensated date.
Hiromi Yoshii is a Tokyo high school girl who likes taking photographs and feels she has no direction beside her three friends: Nao, who is good with computers; Chieko, older and more worldly; and Chisa, who plans to leave school to become a dancer. All four go on paid dates with older men, the practice known in Japan as enjo kosai.
On a day just before the summer holidays they meet in Shibuya to buy swimsuits. Nao has borrowed a mobile phone from Kobayashi, a gay man, and the girls leave messages on a telephone dating line saying they want to meet men that day. Hiromi sees a topaz ring for 120,000 yen and wants it now, today. A middle-aged man pays the four of them to sit with him in a karaoke room, chew muscat grapes and spit them out for him; they split the money, and Hiromi decides to earn the ring's price alone before the department store closes.
She answers the messages by herself. A young man, Uehara, pays her to pretend to be his girlfriend in a video rental shop, and in the adult section he sexually abuses her; she runs, and he pays her anyway. She relays messages between Kobayashi and his boyfriend, who has left him and says Kobayashi's kitten is ill. Then she meets a young man who calls himself Captain EO and carries a stuffed toy, which she mends for him in a love hotel. While she showers he bursts in and berates her for going off with a stranger: he had meant, he says, to attack her, rape her and take her money, and he shows her a stun gun. He throws a few coins at her and leaves.
Hiromi returns the phone to Kobayashi, who thanks her for saving his kitten. When she repeats something Captain EO said to her, Kobayashi tells her that whoever said it must think she is worth a great deal. She never buys the ring. At home she thinks over her day and falls asleep. The film ends with the four girls walking together through ankle-deep water in a drainage channel.
Starring
Asumi Miwaas Hiromi Yoshii
A high school girl with no clear direction, who sets out alone to earn the price of a topaz ring in one day.
Hiromi Yoshii’s story
Hiromi likes taking photographs and, like her three friends, goes on paid dates with older men. One day in Shibuya she sees a topaz ring for 120,000 yen and decides she must have it today, and sets out alone to earn it before the department store closes. A young man who pays her to play his girlfriend in a video shop sexually abuses her; she runs, and he pays her anyway. A young man with a stuffed toy tells her he had meant to rape and rob her, and throws coins at her. She never buys the ring. When she repeats something he said, Kobayashi tells her that whoever said it must think she is worth a great deal. The film leaves her walking through ankle-deep water with her friends.
Kirarias Chisa Noda
One of Hiromi's three friends, who plans to leave school to become a professional dancer.
Hirono Kudoas Nao Yokoi
One of Hiromi's friends, good with computers, who borrows the phone the girls use for the dating line.
Yukie Nakamaas Chieko Takamori
The oldest and most worldly of Hiromi's three friends.
Tadanobu Asanoas Captain EO
A young man with a stuffed toy who takes Hiromi to a love hotel, lectures her, and admits he meant to attack her.
Why it matters
Love & Pop takes enjo kosai, schoolgirls paid by adult men for their company, and films it from the height of the girl being paid. Hideaki Anno's first live-action feature, made after Evangelion, it was shot almost entirely on handheld digital cameras. Anno said himself that the four girls were everywhere and nowhere, high school girls filled with middle-aged men's dreams, and the film does not pretend otherwise about whose fantasy this is. The men Hiromi meets are the ones with the problems: one abuses her, one pays for a fetish, one lectures her about danger after admitting he meant to rape her. The film takes her own wants seriously, a ring, a day that means something, and never lets the men's money pass for her consent. A minor cannot consent to what these men are paying for.