All About Lily Chou-Chou

The story

At a Japanese junior high school, Yūichi Hasumi (Hayato Ichihara) clings to the dreamy, abstract music of pop star Lily Chou-Chou while his relationship with classmate Shūsuke Hoshino keeps shifting under the pressures of adolescence. As schoolyard hierarchies harden into bullying and humiliation, Shugo Oshinari’s Hoshino becomes the other point around which the story turns, with friendship, power, and cruelty changing shape from one moment to the next. Music runs through it all as Yūichi’s refuge, tying together a portrait of teenage isolation, obsession, and the unstable social world around them.