Hirose, Sugisaki, and Kiyohara’s Unrequited Love World Divides Viewers with Its Dark Take on Life and Death

The production team of We Made a Beautiful Bouquet reunites

The film Unrequited Love World, starring Suzu Hirose (26), Hana Sugisaki (27), and Kana Kiyohara (23) — all of whom have played heroines in NHK morning dramas — is drawing mixed reactions and generating significant buzz among fans.

Online, there have been voices of praise such as:

“I cried several times watching the three of them live so earnestly. A must-see film.”

and

“It was such a beautiful story, it changed the way I see the world.”

On the other hand, harsh opinions are also appearing, like:

“Why did it have to be this kind of setting!?”

and

“I can’t believe people are crying and feeling moved by this story.”

The production team behind We Made a Beautiful Bouquet, which was released in 2021 and earned over 3.8 billion yen at the box office, reunited to bring Unrequited Love World to life. While they quickly secured agreements from the three currently in-demand heroines to star, screenwriter Yuji Sakamoto said, “Because these three have such special presence, I didn’t want to create an ordinary coming-of-age or love story.”

But then — what kind of story should be made for these three? As the start of filming approached, Sakamoto struggled with this dilemma.

One day, while still wrestling with the concept, a relative of Sakamoto’s suddenly passed away. Attending the funeral, he found himself feeling a strange sense of detachment, unable to fully grasp the reality of a close person’s death.

“This experience gave me the idea for the film’s motif — that girls who have died continue to exist in a space one layer apart from our reality, unseen from our side, but living just the same,” Sakamoto reportedly shared (according to a film insider).

In recent years, Sakamoto has increasingly explored unique perspectives on life and death in his works.

 

In the film First Kiss 1ST KISS, released this February, Yuji Sakamoto depicted a story about a woman who acquires a time tunnel in an attempt to save her husband, who dies in an accident. In the 2021 drama Omameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands (Fuji TV), he had the character Daishi Takanashi (played by Joe Odagiri) console Towako (Takako Matsu), who is grieving the loss of her close friend Kagome (Mikako Ichikawa), by expressing this distinctive view on life and death:

“Human beings don’t live only in the present. At five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty — people live earnestly at every stage, and those moments aren’t things that simply pass away. So, if you’ve ever seen her smile, then she’s still smiling now. And the five-year-old you and the five-year-old her are still holding hands.”

Where did this distinctive outlook on life and death come from?

“Apparently, Sakamoto himself doesn’t particularly resonate with the concepts of heaven or hell after death,” reveals a producer from the production company. “He once said — after making that clear — that by creating something for those who are no longer here, we can heal ourselves, and it becomes a form of mourning too.”

This unique worldview has been even more clearly expressed in this latest film, and perhaps that’s what’s leaving some fans feeling unsettled.

Between a fantasy world and reality

In Unrequited Love World, three girls who died unexpectedly in their childhood — Misaki (Hirose), who works at a real estate company; Yuka (Sugisaki), who studies quantum mechanics at university; and Sakura (Kiyohara), who works part-time at an aquarium — are vividly depicted right from the opening scenes.

If this were a serialized drama, simply portraying the everyday lives of these three, each living in a world disconnected from others, could easily have become a captivating story in the hands of Yuji Sakamoto, often hailed as a master of serial dramas.

However, this film carries a certain resolve from Sakamoto himself.

“Looking at box office numbers, it’s a well-known fact that Japan’s visual industry is supported by animated films. Live-action works can no longer avoid confronting animated films, which are built on ‘strongly motivated settings and solid narratives.’ Rather than merely depicting quiet, everyday life, live-action films must tell stories that resist the world.”

According to a producer, Sakamoto arrived at this conviction under the influence of director Makoto Shinkai, whom he deeply respects for works like Your Name., Weathering with You, and Suzume.

It may have been those feelings that gave birth to this story of resisting the world — where the three girls try to return to their original world and visit the people they long to reach — and nurtured it into what it is now.

But then, how could this strange worldview be expressed visually? Director Hiroyasu Doi, who had also partnered with Sakamoto on We Made a Beautiful Bouquet, wrestled with this challenge.

“In We Made a Beautiful Bouquet, we spent five years portraying a couple’s relationship in a mostly realistic world. But Unrequited Love World had a fantasy premise, even though what we aimed to depict at its core was reality. How should we visualize the world where these three heroines live? We repeated endless trial and error,” shared a director from the production company.

Then came an unexpected accident for Doi. About a month after filming began, a car carrying Doi and six staff members was involved in an accident, leaving Doi severely injured and admitted to the ICU (Intensive Care Unit).

Filming was temporarily halted. The film even faced the risk of being shelved. Yet ironically, it was this accident that awakened something in Doi.

“Before the accident, I was struggling to internalize the sci-fi concept of this story. But after experiencing that accident, I naturally came to understand the frustration and grief of these three girls who were suddenly subjected to such irrational misfortune,” Doi reportedly said.

Having become one of the victims himself, Doi felt that making this film had become his own mission.

The film’s cathartic final choir scene, reached without any background score (diegetic music), stands as a truly masterful achievement.

“A film I’d be proud to take to my grave,” says screenwriter Yuji Sakamoto.

Will that sentiment reach you too?